


AFTERMATH 



DAVID STARR JORDAN 

AND 
HARVEY ERNEST JORDAN 




Class. 
Book_ 




Gop>7i^i 


[itN°__ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF THE 

EUGENICS OF WAR 

AS ILLUSTRATED BY 

THE CIVIL WAR OF THE UNITED STATES 

AND 

THE LATE WARS IN THE BALKANS 

BY 

DAVID STARR JORDAN 

CHANCELLOR OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY 
AND 

HARVEY ERNEST JORDAN 

PROFESSOR OF HISTOLOGY AND EMBRYOLOGY 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

^be 0iter?itie ^re?^" Cambritroe 

1914 






COPYRIGHT, I914, BY HARVEY ERNEST JORDAN 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October IQ14 



ji./^7/3 



OCT 19 1914 

lGI,A38094.l 



Q 



>- 



U) PREFATORY NOTE 

In the summer of 1912, the undersigned, 
under the auspices of the World Peace 
Foundation, made an attempt to form some 
measure of the effects, on the Southern 
States of our National Union, of the reversed 
selection due to the loss of life in the Civil 
War of fifty years ago. In this work he was 
associated with Professor Edward Benjamin 
Krehbiel, of the chair of Modern History in 
Stanford University, and with Professor 
Harvey E. Jordan, of the chair of Histology 
and Embryology in the University of Vir- 
ginia. Professor Krehbiel devoted himself to 
the historical and statistical phases of the 
subject, while Professor Jordan and the 
writer considered chiefly the biological ele- 
ments, especially those related to eugenics 
and race progress. The present memoir con- 

v 



PREFATORY NOTE 

tains an abstract of the material secured and 
the conclusions reached in this phase of the 
investigation, the others being later treated 
elsewhere. It will be freely admitted that all 
conclusions must be tentative and that no 
mathematical accuracy in the statement of 
the eugenic loss of the Civil War is possible. 
But, on the other hand, the evidence of the 
magnitude of such loss grows, in cumulating 
degree, with every additional survey of the 
facts concerned. The writers are under spe- 
cial obligation to some hundreds of veterans 
of the Confederate army in Virginia, Georgia, 
North Carolina, and other States for frank 
and friendly discussion of the questions in- 
volved, and to about one hundred others, not 
personally known, who have answered sym- 
pathetically our letters of inquiry. 

For the studies in question, Rockbridge 
and Spottsylvania Counties, in Virginia, 
with Cobb County, in Georgia, were espe- 
cially chosen as typical districts. Observa- 

vi 



PREFATORY NOTE 

tions of minor importance were made in 
Henrico, Dinwiddie, and Appomattox Coun- 
ties, in Virginia, Wake County, in North 
Carolina, and Knox County, in Tennessee. 
The appended poem, by the undersigned, is 
suggested by our experiences in "The Wilder- 
ness" of Spottsylvania. 

David Starr Jordan. 

The Red House, 

HoRNTON Street, London, 
July 25, 1913. 



Note. — An Introduction dealing with the outbreak 
of the general European war and an additional chap- 
ter on Macedonia, both written by Dr. David Starr 
Jordan while this book was in press, will be found 
in the succeeding pages. 



CONTENTS 



Introduction. 1914 . . . . " . . xiii 
In the Wilderness xxv 



WAR'S AFTERMATH IN VIRGINIA 
The Problem at Issue 
Spottsylvania County 
Rockbridge County 
Cobb County, Georgia. 
Preliminary Assumptions ' 
Volunteer and Conscript 

The Deserter 

The Military Companies 
Statistical Exactness Impossible 
Analysis of Opinion . . • 
"Best Men first to enlist" . 
The Flower of the People Lost 
War took chiefly the Physically Fit 
Volunteers superior to Conscripts . 

ix 



I 

8 
10 
II 
12 

13 

IS 

18 

19 

20 

22 
24 
29 
30 



cc 



CONTENTS 

Bushmen'* and Other Deserters Few . 32 

Those who fought most survived least . 33 

The Best lost most 36 

The Best Blood suffered most ... 39 

The Strong missed since the War • . 41 

Suffering and Death of Widows . . 45 
Sweethearts remained unmarried; Others 

married in lower stations .... 45 

Farmers now not Inferior .... 47 

Men IN Courts average Lower ... 48 
Public Men Inferior, the Great Men 

Fewer 49 

Rise of the Middle Class .... 52 

All Classes killed in War • ... S3 

Lack of Schooling vs. Inferiority of Blood 54 

Loss OF Courage 56 

Lowering of Average through Immigra- 
tion 57 

Effects of Whiskey 58 

Cousin Marriage 59 

Loss OF Strength through Emigration . 59 

X 



CONTENTS 

The Strong fell in Battle, the Weak died 

IN Camps . .62 

Injury through Failure in Education . 64 

Possibility of avoiding the Civil War . 64 

Democracy of the Camp 69 

Disappearance of Social Lines ... 70 

Blessings of Labor 70 

Social Good followed the War, but War 

WHOLLY Bad 71 

Not ONE Word to be said for War, as War 71 

Conclusion 77 

WAR'S AFTERMATH IN MACEDONIA 84 



INTRODUCTION 

1914 

This little book was written, by my col- 
league and myself, just at the outbreak of 
the Balkan War. This note is written at the 
outbreak of the greater war instigated though 
not caused by the attempted suppression of 
Servia and the rape of Belgium. In the mean 
time the senior author has seen much of the 
first aftermath of war in other nations. He 
has traversed Macedonia and beheld its 
desolation and the expulsion of half its peo- 
ple. He has seen the Bulgarians driven north- 
ward by tens of thousands up the Struma 
Valley from the Greek possessions. He has 
been cognizant of the forced emigration from 
Silistria and from Thrace. He has seen Al- 
banians driven from the Novibazar, these 
in turn driving Greeks by the hundred thou- 
sand out of Turkish Thrace. And from the 

xiii 



INTRODUCTION 

Greek possessions he has seen Moslems by 
the thousand leaving in the steerage of 
steamers bound from Salonica to Stamboul. 
All these, farmers and villagers, rich or poor, 
had left behind their holdings with only that 
which they could carry on their backs. And 
the burned houses of the refugees of the one 
race became the new homes of some other. 
And the way of the refugee is hard, beset by 
hunger, cold, and the infectious diseases 
which always follow war. For sanitation 
implies security and peace, and these the 
battling ages never knew. 

Macedonia is about as large as Virginia. 
It has had two thousand years of civiliza- 
tion. Aristotle was born there, and alas, 
Alexander also. But it is still a wilderness, 
poorly cultivated, scantily cleared. A Chin- 
ese proverb tells us, ''Where armies quarter, 
thorns and thistles grow.^^ Armies have 
quartered in Macedonia for a hundred gen- 
erations. St. Paul found Christians there, 

xiv 



INTRODUCTION 

perhaps as many as exist there now, and at 
PhiUppi in Macedonia the last gleam of 
Roman liberty flickered to extinction. In 
this old Macedonia are rich farmlands, cov- 
ered with tangling vines and prairie flowers, 
seeming never to have known the plough. 

How rich the human harvest buried in 
Macedonia, in the weary warring years from 
Philippi to Kilkis ! Let our imagination com- 
pare the men of to-day with the men who 
might have been: the men of to-day fur- 
tively huddled in dirty villages fired by each 
passing army, and the others lost to the 
world before they were born because their 
fathers died in these same armies. "Those 
who fought the most survived the least,'' 
in Macedonia as in Virginia. Only the man 
who survives is followed by his kind. The 
man who is left determines the future. From 
him springs "the human harvest,'' and, as 
in Rome, and in every war-swept region, the 
human harvest in Macedonia is bad. 

XV 



INTRODUCTION 

Since this book was in type, a world revo- 
lution has taken place. The flames of the 
Balkans have spread to greater Europe. A 
civil war has torn apart the civilization of 
our times. The Europe we have known, the 
Europe of science, art, literature, commerce, 
and industry, exists no more. A mad rush 
of barbarism has wrecked it all, the barbar- 
ism it cherished for its own defense. It has 
broken all restraining bonds of common 
interest, of common friendliness, and of com- 
mon thought. The mailed fist has crashed 
through the delicate far-flung fabric which 
has meant so much to us. It has brushed 
aside our conventions of international law 
and of personal rights as though these had 
been cobwebs. 

It is not the barbarism of one nation 
alone. Each nation in its degree has yielded 
to the same influence. But the democracies 
of Europe have held it in restraint. The 
autocracies are its creations. Those nations 

xvi 



INTRODUCTION 

which the people do not govern are derelicts 
on the international sea, dangerous to others, 
and still more so to themselves. The spirit 
of Absolutism is everywhere the same. It 
holds all Europe under martial law, and mar- 
tial law is not law. It is law's paralysis. 

Against the onrush of barbarism, the na- 
tions of Europe have created no defense, 
save barbarism itself. Against the force of 
arms, they oppose only the force of arms. 
It is too late to ask if there is a better way. 
There is no other left to-day. The better 
way was possible, not now, but ten years 
ago. In the midst of war, there is but one 
way out, and that leads onward. 

Of the contending nations, Belgium alone 
had clean hands when the war began. She 
is destined to be the greatest sufferer to the 
last, and the sufferings she feels and must 
feel again it is impossible for the imagina- 
tion to conceive, or the pen to record. 

The economic development of Belgium 
xvii 



INTRODUCTION 

is checked for half a century. Her social 
development is deranged for we know not 
how long. Exhaustion, stagnation, misery, 
all these affect the physical, the economic, 
the social, the intellectual life. Thorns and 
thistles grow in the harassed mind as in the 
devastated field. The higher life withers in 
the atmosphere of poverty and pestilence. 
The muses flee from the wolf at the door. 

Beyond the present loss, when the "hu- 
man cry as of a lost and deserted child'' is 
hushed, follows the weakening of the na- 
tional stamina. The best of the young blood 
is lost. Those who should have been the 
fathers of the next generation lie in the 
trenches of Liege, Namur, Dinant, and 
Charleroi. After each war comes the pau- 
city of genius, the failure of personal initia- 
tive. The sons of those whom war could not 
use replace those who gave their lives for 
the country. When a man of distinction 
gives up his life for any cause he sacrifices 

xviii 



INTRODUCTION 

more than himself. He closes the door of the 
long future of those who might have been. 
In the strange world of ^'Pan-Germany'' 
is invented a lying philosophy as a sanction 
for war. In contemptuous ignorance of all 
Darwin's work and thought, they call it " So- 
cial Darwinism." This philosophy teaches 
that the "survival of the fittest" imposes 
on us the necessity of war, that war is, in- 
deed, the sublime instrument by which the 
Deity ordains the destruction of the hum- 
blest of his creatures that his favorites in 
shining armor may inherit the earth. The 
small nations and the backward nations 
must yield to the sway of the strong, and 
even the strong from time to time must give 
up the half of their number, as a sacrifice to 
insure their continued strength: and there- 
fore murder and rapine are necessities of 
progress. "War without rapine," says Ana- 
tole France, " is like tripe without mustard, 
too insipid" for a man of spirit. 

xix 



INTRODUCTION 

The military exponent of Pan-Germanism, 
General von Bernhardi, demonstrates that 
"Law is only for the weak; force is for the 
strong; law is only a makeshift; might the 
sole reality/^ Perverting all history, he 
would make us believe that in war the fittest 
survive. "War is as necessary as the strug- 
gle of the elements in nature/' "Inferior 
or decaying races would easily choke the 
growth of the healthy budding element and 
a universal decadence would follow/' The 
simple fact is that, always and everywhere, 
war means the reversal of natural selection. 
Twenty centuries ago, Sophocles declared 
that "war does not of choice destroy bad 
men, but good men ever.'' In every war in 
every nation there is left "the gap in our 
picked and chosen the long years cannot 
fill." 

Schiller, one of the noblest spirits in that 
Germany which Prussian militarism is smoth- 
ering and poisoning to-day, touched the real 

XX 



INTRODUCTION 

truth in a single line: ''Immer der Krieg 
verschlingt die Besten/' (^'Always war de- 
vours the best.") The best of everything is 
drawn into its insatiate maw. 

In the Civil War between the States, the 
position of Virginia fifty years ago had much 
in common with that of Belgium to-day. 
Neither had any leading part in the original 
causes of conflict. Both, through geographi- 
cal position, lay in the very center of devas- 
tation. In both the disaster is the sadder 
because it is spread over generations to come. 

As the Union of the States "could not 
exist half slave, half free,'' so the union of 
Europe could not endure with Absolutism 
and Democracy side by side. No democracy 
is safe with an autocracy as its neighbor. 
No mailed despot is safe by the side of a free 
people. 

The "Armed Peace" of Europe, with its 
mediaeval " Balance of Power," carried with- 
in itself the certainty of its own destruction. 

xxi 



INTRODUCTION 

It is to be destroyed by its own barbarous 
methods. War is a sword without a hilt 
which wounds those who wield it as well as 
those who feel its blade. It is an instrument 
of barbarism, and civilization can never be 
secure while calling on barbarism for its de- 
fense. No holy war was ever carried on save 
by the most unholy means. And every war, 
holy or unholy, wanton or inevitable, brings 
desolation as its aftermath. 

Meanwhile, as I write, the dance of death 
goes on. Three hundred millions of men and 
women of Europe, hoping above all for secur- 
ity and peace, stand helplessly by, awaiting 
the end, suffering the present misery and 
taking unresisting the final consequences. 
There is no other way. The god of battles 
is deaf and blind. "A great soldier like me,'' 
said Napoleon, "cares not a tinker's damn 
for the lives of a million men." He recks no 
more for the wail of an outraged nation than 
for the cry of a starving child. 

xxii 



INTRODUCTION 

As the future of Europe shall unfold it- 
self, and as the fate of the devastated states 
shall begin to take form, it may be instruc- 
tive to glance backward over the half-cen- 
tury which has seen the humiliation and the 
regeneration of one of the noblest of the 
commonwealths which make up our Repub- 
lic, the State of Virginia. 

David Starr Jordan, 

London, August 25, 1914. 



IN THE WILDERNESS 

I 

I STAND as in a dream within a wood, 
A forest crass men call "The Wilderness," 
Of ill-grown oak trees and stunt, scanty pines, 
With sumacs dun and huddling sassafras. 
Enmeshed with brambles rude and tangling 

vines ; 
Its mossy brooksides blue with violets, 
Its red soil ever redder with men's hurt. 
Men named this forest once "The Poisoned 

Wood,'' 
And it was poisoned by the wrath of man, 
'T was trebly poisoned by the flames of Hell 
That burned through every corner of the wood. 

Out from the forest, as in nightmare dream. 
Out from its straggling trees and struggling 

vines, 
Out from its red soil, redder with men's hurt. 
Its ravaged banksides blue with violets; 
From withering venom of its flames of Hell, 
I see a sad procession creeping down. 
Full seven miles of maimed and broken men, 

XXV 



TN THE WILDERNESS 

Full seven miles of ghastly shapes of men, 
Pour like a vomit from the Wilderness. 
Out from the pious shades of Salem Church, 
Out from the charcoal Furnace on the hill. 
From sparse farmhouses saturate with dread, 
Field hospitals of gruesome awfulness, 
Where women, war-crazed, neither knew nor 

cared 
If their own children were alive or dead. 
From Sunlight's enfilade where Sedgwick fell. 
The cross-roads court-house with the old town 

pump. 
Inviting pause upon the Richmond road. 
The Bloody Angle, by McCool's sweet spring. 
From the old roadside inn whose awful name 
Men spoke in bated whispers — Chancellorsville ! 

In its green paddock, leading toward the ford 
Of Rappahannock and of Rapidan, 
Amidst the peach trees' rosy blossoming. 
Among the whitewashed shanties of the slaves. 
The ground was piled thrice deep with wrecks 

of men 
Living and dying — those which once were men. 
The Blue — the Red — commingled with the 

Gray! 
The blazing Inn an awesome funeral pyre. 

xxvi 



IN THE WILDERNESS 

And whoso sought his friend must pick his way 

As one who leaps from floating log to log 

In some far Northern river — Chancellorsville! 

Men tell us how the angry sun went down, 

A bloodshot disk upon a shrinking sky; 

And then uprose the great white Maytime 

moon. 
Flooding the forest with her patient light, 
Till Horror paled in dumb forgetfulness. 

Can we give praise to Lord of Heaven^ or Hellj 
For aught men did here in the Wilderness? 

II 

Down in yon somber hollow Jackson fell, 
His red hand raised in worship, to the last, 
Austere, devoted, of his Duty sure. 
For States make Duty of the wrath of man, 
Imputing Righteousness to deeds abhorred. 
'^The soldier has no duty save to die." 
And is this Duty that he thus should die? 
Are nations built on bones of mangled men ? 
Have bonds of union no cement save blood? 
'^Obedience to the Law before all Time!" 
But then is such obedience supreme. 
Brought to fulfillment through red-handed 



rage ? 



xxvii 



IN THE WILDERNESS 

'^The brave makes Danger Opportunity.'^ 
Is there no danger save from cannonades? 
Is there no hardier, craftier foe than this 
Whose strength is measured by a saber-thrust? 
The path to Justice between man and man 
Must lead through strife, but not through pools 

of blood; 
The clash of will, but not the crush of men. 
But war's fierce furnace melts the chains of 

slaves; 
Its march obliterates old vested wrongs ; 
Foul Bastilles crumble at its trumpet call, 
And tyrants gasp at serried hosts of men. 
War's candent fire-bath purifies the state. 
War's furnace heat the bond of union welds. 
Shall not war bring the great Enfranchise- 
ment, 
The freedom from all shackles of the Past? 

He reaps dire harvest who sows dragon's teeth! 
When Law is silent, anarch Murder rules; 
Law is humanity's consummate flower. 
And Love is the fulfillment of the Law. 
Its blind and brute denial, that is War, 
The Laws of War! In war, there is no law. 
Where war is not, there and there only — 
Law. 

xxviii 



IN THE WILDERNESS 

Where armies quarter, thorns and thistles grow- 
New wrongs spring ever in the wake of war. 
From their hot ashes mount up fresh Bastilles; 
The Sutler camps on the Avenger's trail; 
The Mailed Fist is but a burglar's tool; 
Gross cities swell with loot of great campaigns 
The Vulture gorges where the Eagle strikes. 

And each fresh slaughter dwarfs the breed of men. 
The Unreturning ever were the Brave! 

Nothing enduring yet in wrath was wrought; 
No noble deed in hatred; evermore 
The Master Builder works in soberness ; 
A world which reeked with wars, and reeks 

again. 
The Prince of Peace in patience re-creates. 

Oh, take away the frippery of war, 
Its zest for glory, its mouth-filling lies, 
Its rippling colors and resounding drums, 
Its chargers, bannerets, and bugle calls, 
Its heady wine of music and acclaim 
That make a slaughter seem a holiday! 

Oh, take away the sanction of the State, 
That haloes murder with a holy light, 

XXIX 



IN THE WILDERNESS 

That makes our common hate seem Wrath 

Divine, 
And thunderous shoutings as the voice of God. 

Ill 

I do remember in the far-off years. 
Through the long twilight of the August nights 
(The nights of half a century ago), 
I waited for my brother, whom I loved, — 
I waited for my brother, and he came, — 
Came but in dreams and never came again, 
For he was with the Sisterhood of Fate; 
Man is; Man is not; Man shall never he. 

IV 

How like a chasm yawns our history! 

Still figures pour out from the Poisoned Wood. 

I seem to see them on their fated way, 

I seem to see them creep from death to death, 

Full seven miles of crushed and wasted men, 

Full seven miles of tattered shreds of men, 

Some dazed with blood, not knowing what they 

do. 
Rising to fall, and falling not to rise. 
Whither they go — What matter? They must 



go! 



XXX 



IN THE WILDERNESS 

If there be ghosts, they hover o'er this road; 
If they be ghosts, they fill this Poisoned Wood! 

Perchance no spirits wander of the slain, 
For these are sleeping in the woodland glade, 
The Blue for aye unsevered with the Gray. 
Under that Flag where Hatred dies away 
They rest as men may rest whose work is done, 
The Horror lost in blest forgetfulness. 
For they are with the Sisterhood of Fate, 
Man is; Man is not; Man shall never be. 

Yet there be ghosts here, ghosts that haunt for 

aye! 
Rising forever from the Poisoned Wood, 
The Slain Unnumbered; those who, still unborn, 
Through wistful ages never to be born, 
Never may answer to their country's call; 
The long, sad roll that lengthens with the years. 
The sweet life wasted, widening with the years, 
Those who have lived not, never yet can live; 
Their fathers slumber in the Wilderness, 
While these are with the Sisterhood of Fate, 
Man is; Man is not; Man shall never be. 

Shall God not fill another universe 

With Life we waste in wicked wantonness? 



WAR^S AFTERMATH 



IN VIRGINIA 

THE PROBLEM AT ISSUE 

The problem considered in this memoir is 
that of the determination of the racial or 
biological consequences of the War between 
the States of America in 1861 to 1865. It is 
well ascertained that eugenic or racial de- 
cline, which may occur in any region, is due 
to one or all of three causes : — 

(i) Destruction of the fittest, through war 
or other cause producing contra-selec- 
tion or reversal of selection. 
(2) Emigration, by which the most ener- 
getic or enterprising pass on to other 
regions or in search of larger oppor- 
tunities. 

I 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

(3) Immigration, by which the vacancies 
are filled by weaker stock, " the beaten 
men of the beaten races/' 

These influences, nowhere wholly absent, 
have affected different nations in varying 
fashion. In the Eastern and Southern 
United States, a visible decline of average is 
associated with the first of these causes, and 
in certain localities with the second also. The 
third cause has been also potent, but mostly 
in the great cities and the centers of manu- 
facture. The present discussion is confined 
chiefly to the first of these elements, the re- 
versed selection of war. For purposes of in- 
tensity and accuracy, it is further confined to 
the Southern States and for the most part to 
two counties of the State of Virginia which 
are in a degree typical of the other regions 
involved in the Civil War. 

It is evident, to begin with, that the loss 
of nearly a million of young men largely of 
superior social worth must involve a racial 

2 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

injury to a country, both in its immediate 
effects and in its influence on future heredity. 
"Like the seed is the harvest/^ Heredity runs 
level, and the man who is left determines the 
racial future of the nation. No one could 
maintain on any grounds that such loss would 
be racially beneficial, however the political 
or social results of war may be estimated. 

If this loss works racial hurt, as seems un- 
deniable, even on the grounds of plain com- 
mon sense, this effect should be patent now 
after an interval of two generations. How- 
ever hard it may be to trace these effects, it 
will never be any easier in the future. No one 
misses that which he has never had, and the 
gaps of the past, however great, seem always 
to be filled. The eugenic effects of the Civil 
War constitute a matter of the highest impor- 
tance, deserving of the most careful investiga- 
tion, and no time in the future can be as 
favorable as the present for this work. 

In the War between the States, the losses, 
3 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

North and South, were approximately equal. 
These losses are usually estimated at about 
700,000 men, divided in the proportion of 
400,000 to 300,000. Counting all deaths due 
directly to the war, this may be held to be an 
underestimate, and for our purposes we may 
assume one million not unequally divided. 
This loss represented about two per cent of 
the white population of the North and about 
ten per cent of that of the South. Of the 
colored or negro population no account is 
taken in the present discussion. The South- 
ern loss of human wealth was therefore five 
times as heavy as in the North, and the re- 
sults of this loss should be correspondingly 
more evident. This is in fact the case, al- 
though in certain Northern States, as Ver- 
mont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, the loss 
was almost as great relatively to the popula- 
tion as in Virginia or Georgia. 

This loss fell on the men of that part of 
the corhmunity racially most valuable, the 

4 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

young men between the ages of eighteen and 
thirty-five. At least forty per cent of these in 
the South died without issue. Even among 
the Southern States this loss was unequally 
distributed, Virginia and North Carolina ap- 
parently suffering most.^ Virginia and North 

^ It is estimated that Virginia furnished approxi- 
mately 165,000. There are no records of the killed 
and wounded. North Carolina claims to have fur- 
nished 133,905, of whom 42,000 were killed or 
wounded. The number of voters in North Carolina 
at this time was 115,000. The population of Vir- 
ginia, according to the Census of i860, was 1,596,- 
318; of North Carolina, 992,622. A just comparison 
demands a deduction from Virginia's population of 
442,014, the population of West Virginia (after- 
wards made a separate State) according to the 
Census of 1870. The proportion of enlistments to 
population thus remains about equal in Virginia and 
North Carolina, approximately i to 7. A complete 
estimate of the South's contribution in human values 
requires recognition also of the Southern men who 
fought on the Union side. According to Charles C. 
Anderson Fighting by Southern Federals)^ "296,579 
white soldiers living in the South and 137,676 col- 
ored soldiers, and approximately 200,000 men living 
in the North that were born in the South, making 

5 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

Carolina were in the beginning opposed to 
secession, to slavery, and to coercion alike. 
From her strategic importance, Virginia 
more than any other State bore the brunt of 
the most persistent and most destructive of 
the hard-fought campaigns. Both Virginia 
and North Carolina were settled mainly by 
the same British stock, many Scotch being 
represented and in certain localities the 
Pennsylvania Germans. The racial quality 
throughout was high, and it may be assumed 
to have been about equally high and as good 
as the best in the United States or in the 
world, at the time of the outbreak of the war. 
A survey of the eugenic conditions of the 

634,255 Southern soldiers," engaged on the Union 
side. Of this number Virginia is said to have con- 
tributed 37,791, white and colored. For aid in the 
collection of these data we are indebted to Mr. John 
S. Patton, Librarian, University of Virginia; Pro- 
fessor Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Princeton Univer- 
sity; and Mr. W. S. Burnley, Assistant Secretary, 
Department Confederate Military Records, Rich« 
mond, Virginia. 

6 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

whole South would be a matter of years or 
of a lifetime. In a single summer only a 
preliminary survey could be made, and this 
within a very restricted area. It was desired 
to select some locality in a degree typical 
where the original loss had been great and 
where there was a minimum of modifying in- 
fluences, such as emigration, immigration, 
and the rise of manufacturing industries. 
For such purposes we would seek (i) rela- 
tively superior human stock; (2) relatively 
heavy loss of life ; (3) relatively little change in 
social and economic conditions ; and (4) rela- 
tively little of emigration or of immigration. 
Certain parts of Virginia and of Georgia 
seemed to meet these requirements best. 
Hence we began with an intensive study of 
small districts to sift the evidence of the 
theoretically inevitable deterioration due to 
the loss of a large portion of the best young 
blood of fifty years ago. 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

SPOTTSYLVANIA COUNTY 

In attempting to begin this intensive study 
in Virginia the location first chosen was the 
war-wasted county of Spottsylvania, which 
borders on the historic rivers of Rappahan- 
nock and Rapidan, containing the city of 
Fredericksburg. Near this town is the scene 
of bloody battles known as "the Wilder- 
ness/^ this including Chancellorsville, Spott- 
sylvania Court House, Salem Church, and 
the ''Bloody Angle'' in the forest near 
Spottsylvania. This county extends from its 
hilly lands, known as Piedmont, to the level 
river bottoms of the Tidewater district, and 
it is fairly representative of both. The Pied- 
mont district before the Civil War was a 
region of small farms, largely tilled by their 
owners, while the larger plantations of the 
Tidewater were worked by slaves. But the 
social and economic changes in this region 
tend to obscure the biological effects of the 

8 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

war, and these bulk large in their modifying 
effect on the results of the war-waste of this 
harassed region. It is hard to value these fac- 
tors in comparison, and it was necessary to 
minimize them as far as possible in order to 
reach any degree of certainty. In all that 
part ot Virginia east of the Blue Ridge, the 
best part of the human element was found in 
the life of the plantations. The war wholly 
destroyed the plantation life. So complete 
a social revolution unquestionably had an 
enormous temporary effect upon the appar- 
ent quality of the human stock, by reason of 
its grave interference with proper environ- 
ment for full development. Sons of men once 
wealthy and highly educated grew up 
without schooling. Whatever backwardness 
might possibly obtain could almost equally 
justly be attributed to lack of opportunity or 
to deterioration of quality. The eastem part 
of Virginia, in many respects so favorable for 
our study, was in other regards quite un- 

9 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

suited, for the further reason of a more severe 
industrial devastation than was suffered by 
any other section of the South. Moreover, 
emigration after the war was here especially 
prevalent. Biologic, industrial, economic, 
and social factors are so intricately interre- 
lated as to make isolation of one or the other 
quite impossible; all these worked to some 
extent an apparently like racial effect by sup- 
pression of the best human stock. 

ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY 

In view of the above considerations, the 
Shenandoah Valley, or its southward exten- 
sion, the Valley of Virginia west of the Blue 
Ridge, appeared to furnish the best point of 
attack. Since the life here was mostly that of 
the small farmer, home conditions were not 
seriously disturbed by the war. Home life 
after the conflict remained almost exactly 
what it was before. There were no serious 
economic changes, for this is a farming region 

lO 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

with practically no industrialism, and there 
had been little emigration or immigration. 
The stock in the Valley of Virginia is less 
English than east of the Blue Ridge, being 
largely Scotch-Irish and German. 

In this region the county of Rockbridge 
seemed to meet conditions best, and in this 
county, and especially in the county town of 
Lexington, an investigation was attempted. 
This town is the seat of the university, known 
now as Washington and Lee, of which 
Robert E. Lee became president after the 
war, and of the Virginia Military Institute, 
in which Thomas J. Jackson (''Stonewair') 
was a professor. The people of this county 
were in the beginning and are to this day 
opposed to disunion, to slavery, and to co- 
ercion alike. 

COBB COUNTY, GEORGIA 

Considerable work was also done in Cobb 
County, Georgia, a rural district on the line 

II 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

of Sherman's march, and therefore laid waste 
during the war. Most of our records from 
this county are concerned with economic and 
social conditions.^ 

PRELIMINARY ASSUMPTIONS 

We began this investigation with certain 
preliminary assumptions derived from the 
general knowledge of the history of the Civil 
War. These served as a scaffolding for our 
work. They were (i) that the volunteers re- 
presented a better human element than the 
conscripts ; since these went first to the war, 
eventually furnishing most of the leaders, 
seeing longer service and exposed to greater 
risks, they suffered the greatest loss ; (2) the 
conscripts of the later period saw shorter 
service, incurred less risk, and thus survived 
more generally, to perpetuate their somewhat 
inferior type; (3) there was a considerable 

^ These will be elsewhere treated by Professor 
Krehbiel. 

12 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

body who were exempted on account of phy- 
sical weakness or disabUity, as also some who 
fled to the mountains, and thus were wholly 
preserved and bred their poorer types ; (4) the 
third generation now in existence comprises 
representatives of the three types : survived 
volunteers, survived conscripts, and desert- 
ers and exempts. 

VOLUNTEER AND CONSCRIPT 

If the war in this section produced the effect 
of a contra-selection, then the three grades 
should still be evident among the present 
generation, and there should be a relative 
preponderance of mediocrity. We were for- 
tunate in finding very complete records of 
the military companies from Rockbridge 
County. These showed who were the volun- 
teers, who the conscripts, and who had de- 
serted. However, there does not seem to exist 
anywhere a list of exemptions for disability. 
We were frequently told that there were no 

13 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

such : everybody went to the war, the w^eak 
and sick as well as the strong; and frequently 
the weak and consumptive, we were assured, 
were greatly improved by the outdoor life 
and military discipline. Nor, it is claimed, 
were there any "cowards/" But it was thus 
possible to compare the descendants of certain 
selected volunteers with those of conscripts, 
and both with those of deserters. However, 
it was soon discovered that our first assump- 
tion was too sweeping; as a class the volun- 
teers were not notably superior to the con- 
scripts, and for these reasons : the volunteers 
were largely young men who had relatively 
slight obligatory family ties, or who were in 
training in military schools for just such ser- 
vice. Moreover, when the calls for volunteers 
came, in a certain family of several sons, the 
father and all but one son would respond, one 
remaining to care for the farm and the 
family. When conscription came the remain- 
ing son also went; but he was not by any 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

means necessarily inferior to his father or his 
volunteer brothers. Again, there was a very 
considerable body of good men who were op- 
posed to war as a settlement of political 
questions, who were not in sympathy with 
the Southem cause, or at any rate saw no- 
thing in the contest which appealed to them 
to the extent of making them willing to risk 
their [lives. These men did not volunteer, 
and at last they became "conscripts.'' While 
they probably in many instances made less 
serviceable soldiers by reason of their con- 
victions, they were nevertheless of good 
human stock, sometimes of the best, and 
their offspring are of no lesser quality than 
those of volunteers. 

THE DESERTER 

For this reason the distinction between 
volunteer and conscript, from the standpoint 
of racial quality, is largely spurious. The 
same is true with respect to the second as- 

15 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

sumption, namely, that deserters were of in- 
ferior quality to the others. Some of these, 
of course, fled to the mountains and remained 
there. It did not seem practicable to us to 
attempt to trace their progeny. Their eu- 
genic status thus remains unknown. But we 
possess certain facts which show that desert- 
ers were at least not as a class cowardly and 
racially inferior. In a certain company the 
names of five deserters were recorded. The 
captain of this company is still alive, and de- 
scribed to us the quality of these men and the 
causes for desertion. In no case was the 
cause such as to indicate inferior quality. 
The five deserters were fully up to the average 
at least; only the pressure or temptation in 
their case was uncommon. For example, 
while passing through Chambersburg, Penn- 
sylvania, one man was met by his sweetheart, 
who persuaded him to leave the company. 
We will not say that he was of "inferior 
quality'' because deaf to military duty when 

i6 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

love called so unexpectedly. Again, some of 
the superior quality deserted because they 
sympathized more with the Union side, or 
saw nothing worth risking life for, or were 
opposed to war itself for "conscience' sake/' 
But the vast majority of desertions came late 
in the war on the march from Richmond to 
Appomattox Court House, when most men 
realized that all hope was gone, and when 
their duty to their neglected families seemed 
to have prior claim. S ome of these desertions 
on the way to Appomattox were occasioned 
at sight of home or family. The man to whom 
family ties make so overmastering an appeal 
is not of "inferior quality''! In short, there 
being no "cowards" to mention, all as a class 
were of fairly equal quality, volunteer, con- 
script, and "deserter." Such differences as 
existed lay merely in circumstances and not 
in innate quality. 



17 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

THE MILITARY COMPANIES 

It is commonly believed that the martial 
spirit was especially strong among the young 
men of the South in 1861, and that this fact, 
with the accompanying desire for glory, was 
a large factor in bringing on the war. There 
were in fact many military companies then 
existing, — a number much greater than at 
present, — and some men in these were 
doubtless influenced by the easy glories of the 
Mexican War. The war song, "Maryland,'' 
calls on 

*^ Ringgold's spirit for the fray: 
With Watson's blood at Monterey: 
With fearless Lowe and dashing May"; — 

and is otherwise reminiscent of this unfortun- 
ate episode in our history. There is no doubt 
that such companies existed in number, but 
mainly among the young aristocrats of the 
plantations and of the towns, and the great 
rural population of the South was little influ- 

18 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

enced by them. These companies enlisted, al- 
most bodily, at the beginning of the war, and 
their training had some effect in the early 
victories of the South. But their purpose, on 
the whole, was social rather than military, 
and their influence may easily be exaggerated. 

STATISTICAL EXACTNESS IMPOSSIBLE 

As we had expected in the beginning, it 
soon became evident that no mathematical 
estimate or rigid calculation of racial loss was 
possible. But it was still practicable to secure 
approximate results by less direct methods. 
We took advantage of every opportunity to 
interview representative men, and especially 
veterans of the war, on the questions at issue. 
From hundreds of these, valuable informa- 
tion was gleaned. These conversations were 
crystallized into a set of thirty propositions 
which were one after another to be tested. 
These propositions, usually in the words of 
some thinking veteran, were put into the 

19 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

form of a questionnaire and sent broadcast 
over the South to the surviving Confederate 
officers and other men of intelligence, for 
comment and criticism. 

ANALYSIS OF OPINION 

In the remaining pages we attempt as a 
preliminary step toward further investiga- 
tion to analyze the answers and comments 
of fifty-five of the answers received, laying 
especial stress on those who have been vitally 
interested spectators of the war itself, as well 
as of much that immediately preceded and 
all that has meanwhile transpired. Our best 
thanks are due these Confederate heroes for 
their painstaking eff^orts to help us in our 
attempt honestly to verify the final and most 
intimate argument against war, namely, that 
it robs a country of its fundamental asset, its 
best young citizenship, the potential ances- 
tors of the "thoroughbreds" of the coming 
generation. 

20 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

In the answers to our questions there was 
a wealth of information that Hes outside 
the immediate scope of our quest, necessarily 
frequently impassioned, sometimes with nar- 
row perspective, but always sincere, frank, 
and charitable. We have thus received here a 
glimpse of the spirit of the Old South such as 
we could never have derived from book or 
lecture. One is most profoundly impressed, 
as one reads these lengthy inspired com- 
ments, with the fact of unutterable loss in the 
slaughter of the million of similar souls of 
knightly spirits before they could leave their 
princely stamp on human issue. In the fol- 
lowing analysis we purposely state largely 
the bare facts, stripped of all explanatory 
detail and sentiment. The assenting replies 
are frequently worded: "true, as a general 
proposition,'' or "true, generally speaking.'' 
By means of the longer quotations, selected 
from the more prominent contributors, an at- 
tempt is made also to present both sides of 

21 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

the argument concerning the various phases 
of the subject under discussion, in every case 
indicating the position held by the majority. 
We may say that the opinions of only the 
obviously thoughtful, however radical, of our 
correspondents have been incorporated in 
this study. The tentative propositions are 
numbered serially, and our final conclusions 
briefly summed up at the end. 

I. The leading young men of the South were 
a part of select companies of militia and 
these companies were the first to enlist 

From this statement only two dissent, and 
several approve with slight qualifications. 
One explains that while these companies were 
formed of leading young men, they neverthe- 
less did not contain the majority of them. 
*^Not all or even a majority of leading young 
men were in the militia companies when the 
war came on. Most of them were engaged in 
private business — such as planting, mercan- 

22 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

tile, and professional pursuits, etc. That class 
first volunteered/^ Another says that there 
were not many such companies at the begin- 
ning of the war, — only six in North Caro- 
lina, for example, — but were rapidly formed 
after the opening of the war. We are re- 
minded also that this was equally true of the 
North. Here, however, the relative propor- 
tion of these leading young men to the whole 
number of the populations was so small as to 
make a much less serious impression upon 
future generations. Moreover, in the North 
they did not represent so large a proportion of 
individual families as in the South. A general 
comment is made that, ^'This is perhaps true 
of the towns and cities of the South; but the 
population of the South was overwhelmingly 
rural^ and in the country districts there were 
few organized militia companies (correspond- 
ing to the National Guard of to-day). In the 
country, the volunteers came from the unor- 
ganized militia, without regard to military 

23 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

training or social position. Speaking in gen- 
eral terms, the infantry volunteers came in 
largest part from the non-slaveholding class, 
while the cavalry commands were recruited 
largely from the slaveholding class — men 
who were able to equip themselves for mounted 
service. However, there were many cases 
where horses were given by men of wealth to 
cavalrymen who were unable to mount 
themselves. 

2. The flower of the people went into the war 
at the beginning, and of these a large part 
died before the end 

This thesis received unanimous assent. 
One contributor places the deaths at forty 
per cent of the enlistment. The relative seri- 
ousness from a racial standpoint of so great a 
war mortality depends upon whether it repre- 
sented a large or small percentage of the total 
male portion of individual families. The per- 
centage was frequently very large; in some 

24 



1 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

instances practically total. For example, the 

family of D (Virginia) consisted of five 

sons, all of whom went to the war. Four of 
these were killed and one died of typhoid 
fever directly after the war. One had married 
and had one child and one grandchild, both 
females, both now dead. A Georgia family of 
six sons lost three in the war. One of the sur- 
vivors left a large family, but a son bom dur- 
ing the war has "always been a weakling 
physically — the ^runt' of the family."" This 
son attributes his weakness to the damaged 
vitality of his father by reason of the war, 
which left him invalided the remainder of his 

life. A Virginia family of G contributed 

seven soldiers (brothers or cousins), five of 
whom were killed and the other two wounded. 

Mr. N had thirty kinsmen in the war. 

About one quarter of these were killed. He 
had also three brothers in the army, two of 
whom were killed. "About twenty per cent 
of the first men enlisted pulled through to the 

25 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

end. In each company most of the men were 
kin and recruited from their kinfolk/' " When 

the war began Mr. C (of superb stock) 

was a lad of nineteen. Of twenty-six officers 
of the battaUon he is now the sole survivor. 
That class of people is bound to disappear. 
But all that did not take to drink have done 
well since the war." A certain Georgia com- 
pany of infantry numbering one hundred and 
nine members, the best blood of Georgia, suf- 
fered a fifty per cent loss including two cap- 
tains. The University of Virginia went into 
the war almost as a body, and suffered a 
heavy mortality. Of the one hundred men 
who went from Liberty Hall (now Washing- 
ton and Lee University) only three now sur- 
vive. Of ninety men in a certain company 
every one of them was hit in the battle of 
Gettysburg. During the war only three old 
men and boys under sixteen were left in 

F , A County. Of the students of the 

University of North Carolina between 1850 

26 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

and 1862, eight hundred and forty-two, or 
fifty-seven per cent, were in the Confederate 
army, three hundred and twelve, or thirty- 
four per cent, were killed or died in service. 
A certain captain tells us that the regiment 
to which his company belonged "contained 
the best young men the country afforded. 
The great bulk of these were lost. Just as 
soon as we lost that type of man our cause 
was lost. These men could not be replaced.'' 
In consequence of the reversed selection 
which ensued, "the young men of to-day are 
not of the same caliber and high type as those 
of Civil War days.'' 

"Certainly," remarks a contributor, "but 
the 'flower of the people' do not by any 
means represent the most desirable class either 
from the point of view of eugenics or from the 
point of view of economics. No one doubts, 
however, that it is to the 'flower of the 
people ' that we must look for advancement in 
the arts and sciences, and for the advance- 

27 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

ment in general racial culture. An aristo- 
cratic class is the continually vanishing pre- 
cipitate from the solution represented by the 
great mass of humanity. As the families 
which compose the aristocratic class disap- 
pear, new families from the grades beneath 
continually rise up and take their places. 
The children of the aristocratic classes are 
few in number, more or less weak, and often 
defective physically, averaging about twenty- 
five per cent less in weight at birth than the 
children of 'the people,' with small and slen- 
der bones, small hands and feet, almost al- 
ways defective dentition, etc., though power- 
ful mentally; and an abnormal percentage is 
female ; the males possess a very high degree 
of sterility. I cannot see how any race can be 
more than temporarily affected in cultural 
development by the entire removal of its aris- 
tocratic class ; in two or three generations it 
replaces itself from the remaining elements of 
the population." It must be objected, how- 

28 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

ever, that the "eudemic'' doctrine, or drift 
attitude, expounded in the last quotation, 
entirely ignores the hereditary aspect of the 
civically significant and valuable human 
qualities. 

3. War took only the physically fit; the physi- 
cally unfit remained behind 

This thesis failed to elicit assent from seven 
contributors. Three desire some qualifica- 
tions. One suggests the substitution of 
"chiefly'' for ''only.'' Thus modified, it 
would probably be unanimously approved. 
Another suggests that there should be added 
"also the physically unfit, but morally fit." 
In short, in certain counties everybody be- 
tween the ages of sixteen and sixty enlisted 
during the last years of the war. "Partly 
true," says one; "before the war had closed, 
all classes of people were participating in it. 
The junior reserves had been called out and 
many boys between sixteen and twenty years 

29 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

of age from families of all kinds lost their 
lives/' "Owing to the exemptions provided 
by the conscript laws passed by the Confeder- 
ate Congress there were many who were 
physically fit for military service who re- 
mained behind — for illustration, those who 
owned or controlled a certain number of 
able-bodied slaves. Hence the frequent asser- 
tion made in the South by the non-exempt 
that it was 'the rich man's war and the poor 
man's fight/'' 

4. Conscripts y though in many cases the equal 
of volunteers^ were on the average inferior 
to the lattefr both in physical and moral 
qualities and made poorer soldiers 

This fails of approval by only six. A num- 
ber stress moral inferiority, but deny any 
physical difference. We are also informed 
that there were no "conscript companies." 
As conscripts arrived they were apportioned 
among volunteer and seasoned companies. 

30 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

That the conscripts frequently made poorer 
soldiers is generally admitted. But the rea- 
sons given are various. The more important 
are that they had little or no enthusiasm, fre- 
quently feeling that they were fighting for the 
perpetuation of a condition which was bane- 
ful to them as small farmers. Moreover, they 
were more largely married men, and in conse- 
quence more discontented away from home. 
Good soldiery is as largely a spiritual as a 
physical matter. The statement that "the 
men who did not go into the war and had to 
be conscripted were the worsj the South had'" 
seems a little too strong. The comments are 
also made that ''conscripts, being of a lower 
type than the volunteers, undoubtedly pos- 
sessed a higher average of fertility and were 
therefore of value in providing in subsequent 
generations the laborers and tradesmen upon 
which the economic strength of any commun- 
ity ultimately depends. You must not lose 
sight of the fact that the conscript regiments 

31 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

were not nearly so well officered as the volun- 
teer regiments, which accounts for some of 
the difference between them. It takes first 
class officers to drive conscripts, while almost 
any one can lead volunteers''; and, ^'Many 
men of family who did not volunteer for ser- 
vice, but afterwards fell within the provisions 
of the conscript laws, were in every sense the 
equals of the earlier volunteers, the young 
men without families, and perhaps after their 
enforced enlistment made just as good sol- 
diers/' 

5. Considerable numbers of men fled to the 
hills and other "places to escape conscrip- 
tion {"bushmen'')^ and others deserted 
from the ranks and joined them 

This proposition received the unqualified 
approval of less than half. The consensus of 
opinion is that the number of deserters was 
negligibly small. The admission is made, 
however, by a conscript officer, that it is 

32 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

"undoubtedly true. Some would evade serv- 
ice, no matter how great the efforts to force 
them into the service. All kinds of imaginary 
ailments were pretended/' Again it is con- 
tended that "there were few deserters in the 
Far South. It was frequently remarked that 
the squads of cavalry detailed to hunt de- 
serters and to enforce the conscript laws took 
more good men from the front than all the 
conscripts and deserters put together.'' 

6. The volunteer companies^ having enlisted 
at the beginning of the war^ lost more heav- 
ily than the companies of conscripts which 
entered the war later. (" Those who ^jit^ 
the most survived the least!'^ The deserters 
suffered practically no loss of life, however 
much inconvenience 

This proposition was denied by only one, 
and questioned by another. The latter re- 
marks that it "looks reasonable, but will not 
bear verification. The men who were caught 

33 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

in exposed places of battle suffered/' The 
last sentence of the thesis cannot be ques- 
tioned. But when one recalls the carnage at 
the foot of Marye's Heights, in the Bloody 
Angle at Spottsylvania Court House, and at 
the battle of the Crater, — as well as the fact 
that the heavier fighting took place in the 
later years of the war, and that there were no 
"conscript companies,'' — it needs qualifica- 
tion to an extent robbing it of most of its sig- 
nificance. As to the original secessionists, 
few of whom went to the war, it is main- 
tained that only one or two made good sol- 
diers. "They were mostly politicians or 
simply agitators." ^ Still their children are 
"just as good as those of the volunteers. 
Many of these were professional men, for 
which account they were excused from ser- 
vice. Also most of them were close to the age 
of exemption. As a rule the laboring class 
made extremely good soldiers, and contrib- 
uted few 'bushmen.' Conscripts were gener- 

34 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

ally men of large families fully dependent 
upon them for support. They were perfectly 
loyal, but did not feel that they could leave 
their families. All men who went to the war 
were equally good.'" 

From a different section we have the fol- 
lowing from the grandson of the leading citi- 
zen before the war: ^'G at the outbreak 

of the war was a rich, intelligent, and aristo- 
cratic place, which cannot be said of the place 
to-day. All the families were broken up after 
the war, either through death or emigration. 
Young men had to go elsewhere to make a 
living. The best men were killed in the war. 
These men volunteered and were exposed to 
dangers of all sorts. The poorer types had to 
be conscripted and most of them took such 
good care of themselves in time of danger 
that they returned. The present generation 
is not up to the Civil War standard. There 
were twenty or twenty-five young men of my 
generation who distinguished themselves and 

35 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

were a credit to the community and the na- 
tion. I can think of only three of the present 
generation who have brought credit to them- 
selves or the community. The same can be 
said of M , a place with which I am fa- 
miliar.'' It is further urged that "This dis- 
tinction between volunteer and conscript 
companies is hardly justified. Most men who 
were forced into the service by the operation 
of the conscript laws took time by the fore- 
lock "and enlisted in previously existing 
volunteer commands." 

7. The result of this was that the men of the 
highest character and quality bore the brunt 
of the war and lost more heavily than men 
of inferior quality. This produced a change 
in the balance of society by reducing the 
percentage of the better types without a cor- 
responding reduction of the less desirable 
types; a condition which was projected into 
the next generation because the inferiors 

36 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

lived to have progeny and the others did 
not^ 

This receives a bare majority of ^^ayes." 
In view of what was said under number 6, the 
criticism, ^'too general," and, "statement a 
Httle too strong,'' seems justifiable. However, 
the following by a soldier of exceptional intel- 
ligence and high social and business attain- 
ment deserves quoting: "The best men were 
killed off by the war, causing a deterioration 
of human stock, but it is impossible to tell 
the extent of this deterioration. The fellows 
who held back raised inferior stock. No de- 
serter of the Army of Virginia has ever 

^ Thus In the Liberty Hall — Washington and 
Lee University — Volunteers, — a company of the 
Stonewall Brigade, — from Lexington, Virginia, 
forty-eight of the seventy-six who were alumni of 
Washington and Lee University lost their lives or 
were seriously wounded in the thirty-two battles 
from Manassas to Appomattox. Of the one hundred 
and six non-alumni in the same company forty men 
were lost. 

37 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

amounted to anything. Twenty years after 
the war, the men who had fought through the 
war had been helped to their feet again, but 
not by the men who had stayed out of the 
war. The only decent thing in the South is 
that which came out of the Southern army.'* 
Another says, the best of to-day are the de- 
scendants of the aristocrats who adapted 
themselves to changed conditions. And an- 
other asks, ^'What shall we say about the 
large number of people in Virginia, Tennes- 
see, Kentucky, Maryland, and other States, 
who were opposed to the war from principle, 
and refused to take up arms against their 
'flag' until they were drafted? No 'aristo- 
crats' on earth are their superiors. They are 
themselves the real aristocrats.'' It is ob- 
jected that the statement is "hardly justifi- 
able. It was notorious that the cavalry 
commands, recruiting largely from the 'best 
blood ' of the South, suffered less in propor- 
tion to numbers than the infantry commands, 

38 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

made up in largest part of those not equally 
favored by fortune/' 

8. ^^ Eighty per cent of the best blood of S 



was lost in the war!^ — "/ believe in blood 
in men as I do in horses ^^ 

Here the sentiment wins full assent. One 
declines, however, to accept it as true of men 
in the same degree as of horses, "except as 
blood determines environment and tradi- 
tions/' A majority deny that the percentage 
of loss was as high as eighty per cent. The 
highest admitted among the objectors is 
sixty per cent. One suggests that the sen- 
tence should read "constructive ability" 
rather than "best blood." "On the whole, it 
is no doubt true that the upper classes of 
Southem society suffered losses of dispropor- 
tionate severity in warfare. It must, how- 
ever, not be forgotten that the constitution 
of Southern society, as of other aristocratic 
organizations in history, was largely artifi- 

39 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

cial. I do not say with certainty that the 
Southern aristocracy had an influence be- 
yond its merits. But I think it was true to a 
considerable extent that it contained ele- 
ments no longer worthy of their influential 
position. Slavery was injurious to practical 
efficiency, and as a result of it many sons of 
well-to-do families were lazy and dissipated, 
drinking being prevalent throughout the 
South. On the other hand, there was in the 
lower strata of Southern society a great 
amount of native ability suffering to be liber- 
ated, and to a large extent this was liberated, 
not so much by the war as by the social reor- 
ganization which ensued upon it. In that 
respect the war had somewhat the effect 
which the period of the Revolution and of 
Napoleon had in France, the 'carriere 
ouverte aux talents'. The political control 
of the South during the past twenty years 
seems to have been mainly in the hands of 
persons whose fathers or grandfathers were 

49 



i 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

of the class that had one slave apiece or no 
slaves. Often they have been coarse but vig- 
orous persons, though not always with capa- 
city for growth nor with a generally high 
character. Now in industrial life the leader- 
ship of such persons has been much more 
beneficial, I imagine, than would have been 
that of the scions of the old aristocracy, who 
often seem rather helpless persons, with 
more refinement than vigor. These things of 
which I have spoken are not so much results 
of war as of this particular war and the crum- 
bling of the old aristocracy.'^ A critic's com- 
ment is that "the idle and the thriftless 
— the ne'er-do-wells — volunteered quite 
as promptly as the 'bloods'; and bullets 
and camp fevers were no respecters of 
persons." 

p. " We can only judge of those who died by the 
success of others. ^^ — ^^We should have 
accomplished a great deal more in these fifty 
41 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

years if we could have had the help of the 
men who fell in the war^^ 

This thesis evoked much comment. It gets 
a bare majority of affirmative repHes. One 
calls it " true almost beyond comprehension '' ; 
another disagrees utterly, maintaining that 
'Var stimulated to better manhood." One 
remarks that "no man can fail to believe in 
blood who has lived fifty years ''; another 
holds that the Confederate martyrs "did 
more good for the South by their heroic death 
in the cause of a great principle than they 
would have done if alive''; and still another, 
"the force of their example has done won- 
ders." 

Half of the best were killed. The South 
suffered immensely from the weakening of 
the breed, but only meager records were pre- 
served and no authoritative estimate can yet 
be made. Virginia had 165,000 men in the 
field; of these only 10,000 are now living. 

42 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

There is no record of the lost, "we can only 
judge of those who died by the success of 
others/^ "There is, of course, a good deal of 
nonsense about this talk of blood, in the 
South, as elsewhere,^' we are warned. " In the 
North and in the South alike, with very few 
exceptions, the American nation in its first two 
centuries was composed by transplanting to 
this country a large section of the European 
middle class, with a little of the dregs and 
almost none of the aristocracy.^ The plain 
people rose to be aristocrats in the South by 
acquiring property of one sort, just as in more 
recent years they have risen to be ^society 
people' in the North by acquiring property 
of another sort ; nevertheless, it in many ways 
does people good to suppose that they are of 
high descent when they are not. I am accus- 
tomed to say to the young people around me 

^ See Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia, by- 
Professor Thomas J. Wertenbaker: Michie Co., 
Charlottesville, Virginia, 1912. 

43 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

that the American nation consists of two 
sorts of people, those who are descended 
from lower middle-class English and are 
aware of it, and those who are descended 
from lower middle-class English people and 
are not aware of it. The latter feel much bet- 
ter/' One admits that "the standard of the 
younger generation is not up to that of the 
war, but this fact is not necessarily charge- 
able to the war. There is undoubted truth in 
the theory. The percentage of loss among 
the higher classes was greater than among 
the lower and there has been a lowering of 
the level of manhood. However, the change 
is largely due to changed economic conditions. 
It is impossible to measure the loss of these 
young men.'' "There is only one opinion on 
this question. It is true and we would have 
recuperated more rapidly. Their deaths are 
an irreparable loss to the South." "Of 
course, in every sparsely settled country — 
where the point of ' diminishing returns ' has 

44 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

not been reached — the loss of Hfe told more 
seriously upon economic progress than in an 
older region more densely populated/' 

10. ^'Widows of soldiers suffered great hard- 
ships and most of them never remarried; 
the death-rate among them was unusually 
high for the first ten or fifteen years after 
the war^^ 

This is denied by a sole contributor, who 
calls it ^^ romancing/' Several question its 
strict accuracy, suggesting that "a large per- 
centage'' or "many" would more nearly ex- 
press the actual fact than "most/' "There 
can be little doubt but that the stress and 
strain of war, with its untold privations, 
told heavily in shortening the lives of 
women/' 

11. " The sweethearts of many a victim of the 
war never married; with the elevation of the 
middle class and the lack of men of their 

45 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

own class many girls of the aristocracy 
married men beneath them in station^^ 



This receives less hearty approval, only a 
fifty per cent affirmation. It would undoubt- 
edly have met better success if ^'some'" were 
substituted for "many/' However, the chief 
dissatisfaction seems to be with the con- 
cluding clause. The comments are, "imag- 
inary''; "very few Southern women mar- 
ried Mown'"; and, "station is not synony- 
mous with strain." "It is true that women 
of culture, born of the planter class, have 
married men who came up from the non- 
slave-owning class — strong men who bal- 
anced the vigor that comes from manual 
labor on the farm against the culture of the 
upper class." However, after due allowance 
for qualifications the general approval of the 
last two propositions answers the frequent 
criticism of the position that war works "re- 
versed selection " through the destruction of a 

46 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

large quota of superior males, namely, that 
this takes no account of the females of similar 
quality who are subject to no such destruc- 
tion: these frequently do not marry, or are 
compelled to marry poorer strains. The lat- 
ter result, however, is far from a racially un- 
mitigated evil, regarded in a broad and demo- 
cratic sense. 

12. " The farmers are now of a lower type than 
before the war'^ ^ 

This proposition is very emphatically 
denied by many, and objected to by most. It 
is undoubtedly mistakenly worded. I gather 
from the replies and comments that the state- 
ment is true only if comparison is implied be- 
tween the ante-bellum planters and pres- 
ent-day farmers. If actual farmers are meant 
to be compared, there remains still only a 
meager assent. "The ^poor whites' as a rule 
are making good. They, too, are largely good 

^ Opinion of a Virginia attorney. 

47 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

stuff. Their faults are largely those of lack of 
education. With proper training they de- 
velop efficiency. The middle class in general 
are doing better than the sons of slavehold- 
ers.'' We are told also, ''This is an error. 
The small farmer of to-day is immeasurably 
superior to the small farmer of the old regime 
— and as for the 'planters/ perhaps honors 
are fairly even between those of the two 



eras.'^ 



13. ^'All over the State the class of men attend- 
ing courts does not measure up in intelli- 
gence or in ideals with those before the 



war^^ ^ 



This proposition is left untouched by a 
number. It wins assent from about half. It 
is questioned by some ; vehemently denied by 
others and as emphatically affirmed by a 
few. One man who was on the bench for 
thirteen years remarks that there is "no 

^ Opinion of a Virginia judge. 

48 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

question of the truth of this/' "I think/' 
says another, "that any judge in New Eng- 
land would unqualifiedly make exactly the 
same statement, and so would any of the 
older magistrates in British Guiana or in the 
West Indies/' " Far below it,'' says a third. 
"My observation as a lawyer for many years 
has caused me to remark about it/' 

14. " The public men of the South do not mea- 
sure up to those of old times'^ 

This statement is given lengthy considera- 
tion in the comments. It is approved by 
about half, in some instances unreservedly, 
in others with qualifications. The most fre- 
quent reply is that the same is true of the 
entire country, "commercialism absorbing 
the nation's strength that formerly went to 
public life." In proof of this proposition, one 
recalls the fact that the South furnished nine 
out of the fifteen ante-bellum Presidents. 
One accounts for the Southem dearth of 

49 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

public men of towering ability on the basis of 
negro suffrage ; and one reminds us of a lack 
of superior statesmen throughout the world ; 
e.g., England. An explanation of the appar- 
ent fact is attempted by several on the 
ground that there are now so many public 
men of cardinal ability as to render their 
existence commonplace ; again, that the stim- 
ulus for superior efforts is lacking, and that if 
the occasion demanded, giants would loom 
up from among the ^^ common people.'^ The 
war had little to do with "this numerical 
degradation of public men,'' according to a 
Tennessee correspondent. "It is the moral 
depravity of the whole body politic ; a univer- 
sal subsidence of the morals of the electorate, 
produced by the money of the vastly rich. 
This is true of the whole country from Maine 
to Califomia, and from the Lakes to the 
Gulf." 

" Intelligence is not identical with mental 
superiority, and social standing certainly is 

SO 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

not so/' says another. "There are a number 
of assertions that in the Civil War the better 
men were killed and the worse survived. In- 
asmuch as in most wars losses by exposure, 
disease, and neglected wounds amount, all 
told, to far more than losses by immediate 
destruction in battle, there is a very im- 
portant way in which the strong tend to sur- 
vive and the weak to perish. Those who at 
bottom have the best constitutions are less 
likely to be carried away by other influences 
than the bullets that kill or mortally injure. 
Assertions as to whiskey rather favor the 
idea that an undesirable element was carried 
away when the highest class perished in 
greater numbers than the middle class." 
"The public men of the South, judging from 
the pages of history alone, are superior to the 
'hot-headed,' so-called aristocrats before the 
war. The public men of the South are the 
equal of the public men of any other section 
of the country.'' " Men like John T. Morgan, 

51 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

of Alabama, L. Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi, 
and Ben H. Hill, of Georgia, were the peers 
of any group of ante-bellum Southern lead- 
ers ; but it is true that they belonged as much 
to the old regime as the new, for they grew 
to manhood before the War between the 
States/' Compared with those of fifty years 
ago, the public men of to-day are inferior, 
according to one correspondent, "in intelli- 
gence, broad views, high sense of honor, char- 
ity, and capacity to conduct governmental 
affairs/' "There are men in the South to-day 
as wise and efficient as ever in former times, 
but the number of strong men is relatively 
fewer/' 

75. ^^ After the war the best of the middle class 
— farm managers and commercial men — 
rose to equality with the remnants of the old 
aristocracy^^ 

This is generally approved, though em- 
phatically denied by four. One comments 

52 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

thus: "They did not have to rise; they sim- 
ply asserted themselves/' "Why should n't 
they?'' asks another, "they represent the 
class from which the aristocracy had been 
continually replenished; the process of re- 
plenishment was temporarily accelerated, 
that is all." "There were many cases where 
the non-slave-owning ^overseers' became the 
owners of the plantations which they had 
formerly superintended for the slave-owner," 
explains another. "They understood the 
management of labor better than the former 
owner, and grew rich, in some cases, as the 
former owner became impoverished." 

i6. " The Civil War destroyed the cream and 

stirred up the dregs^^ 

This is not approved. Many remark that 
it is "too sweeping" or "too strong." This is 
undoubtedly true. It is denied by a number 
of exceptional thoughtfulness and of special 
opportunity for becoming conversant with 

53 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

the facts. There is probably more than a 
grain of truth in the assertion that "the 'poor 
whites' of the South have never had justice 
done them. They are much better raw ma- 
terial than is generally supposed.'' "The 
writer of the above [i.e., statement number 
i6] is an extremist/' is the comment of one, 
"and the true historian would do well to avoid 
taking him seriously." 



J/. " The men who got themselves killed were 
the better men^^^ 

"True, good men of all classes were killed, 
but no one class had a monopoly of getting 
killed." 

i8. ''The present deterioration of human 
qualities is due to lack of schooling rather 
than to impoverishment of blood^^ 

As to this, few admit any deterioration in 

^ Compare with this the old French proverb, — 
*^A la guerre ce sont toujours les memes qui se font 



54 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

human quality. Several attribute it equally 
to impoverishment of blood and inferior kind 
of schooling. One, a Confederate soldier and 
still an influential teacher of youth, debits 
deterioration to the overthrow of political 
ideals and the loss of family and state 
"pride/' Another, of similar qualifications 
and position, attributes it to "too much 
schooling by girls/' Still another blames 
"bad newspapers/' But the majority would 
apparently more probably subscribe to the 
opinion that "the Southern youth is better, 
stronger, freer, and more aggressive than 
ever" ; and that "the standards are as high as 
ever in the world's history/' A certain wo- 
man who has been an intelligent spectator of 
events in Virginia for the past sixty years, 
admits a degeneration, physically, intellect- 
ually, and morally, but attributes it to the 
demoralization of the home, following the 
breaking-up of plantation life. "There has 
been no deterioration on the average,'^ main- 

55 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

tains one, "while there has been more than a 
corresponding gain in the masses/' 

ig. ^^ Loss of courage in face of financial 
ruin was a greater damage than loss of 
blood'' 

This is unanimously denied, questioned, or 
very materially qualified. One will assent if 
the word "financiar' is changed to "consti- 
tutional/' " Loss of spirit '' is only considered 
a very temporary influence. The most that 
is granted is that it was a certain small factor. 
The general opinion seems to be that "the 
result of the war was only to stimulate the 
people of the South to make more of them- 
selves; they met the situation strongly and 
nobly.'' Nevertheless, one remarks: "This 
was the prevailing sentiment. I have known 
good men to take to drink, give up all eff^orts 
and die from trouble at their misfortunes, 
saying, 'AH is lost — life is a burden.'" 

56 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

*^Many of the planter class could not recover 
from the blow dealt by the upheaval in the in- 
dustrial system in which they were bred ; but 
the above statement appears too strong/' is 
still another comment. 

20. ^'One element of deterioration came from 
the people of the North who for commercial 
reasons sought the conquered districts^' 

This is warmly approved by a few. By 
most, the "carpet-bag'' influence is evalu- 
ated as "very temporary" and of "no im- 
portance." "Here again we get a grain of 
truth, but it is a half-truth. There was a 
class of people who came from the North 
whose presence was then, and has continued 
to be, a blessing to the country. The one great 
mistake of all, and the one which has done 
more to affect the South in every way, was 
the outrageous treatment of the people by 
the ^carpet-baggers' and the fanatics. The 
giving of the ballot without qualification or 

57 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

preparation to the negroes was a blunder 
which has deepened into a crime. The negro 
should have been made to earn his citizen- 
ship/^ "This element was inconsequential, 
except in politics, where its influence was 
baleful beyond description in setting up the 
^carpet-bag '-negro State Governments in the 
South under the Reconstruction Acts of 
Congress, which were bolstered up by federal 
troops/' 

21. ^'Whiskey was the curse of the Southern 
aristocrats.^' — ''The aristocratic failures 
were mostly hard drinkers'' 

This is practically unanimously denied. 
The frequent comment appears that whiskey 
is a "general curse,'' not typical of section or 
class. " Heredity kills an aristocracy as surely 
as whiskey. There is no evidence that whis- 
key was worse for the Southern aristocracy 
than heredity has been for that of the 
North," is the comment of one contributor. 

58 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

22. ^'Cousin marriage {common in the higher 
social circles in parts of the South) may 
have been in some degree a harmful ele- 
ment'^ 

One correspondent affirms this most em- 
phatically. However, it is almost unani- 
mously denied or questioned. The general 
opinion seems to be that it has been a negligi- 
ble factor in determining racial conditions, 
more prevalent in aristocratic communities, 
but not confined to any particular section of 
the country. But one says, "Yes, and their 
offspring from my observation were physi- 
cally and mentally very weak, they died 
young, and many were consumptives.'^ 

23. Emigration has weakened the South as 
much as war 

This thesis also is generally questioned. 
One sees an advantage in the Southern emi- 
gration common immediately after the war, 
in that it served to bring the Western and 

59 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

Northern sections of the country into "closer 
sympathy" with the South. The most that 
can be admitted is that emigration was a 
small contributory factor in the racial im- 
poverishment of certain portions of the 
South. Also, "the influence of foreigners 
must have been equally important in reduc- 
ing our standards with losses in the Civil 
War/' "I think, judging from conditions in 
the North, a vast deal more,'' remarks one. 
" For what emigration can do to a country, 
look at Spain, which at the time of the dis- 
covery of the American continent possessed 
the finest people in the world. The Spanish 
people are now getting upon their feet again, 
but it has been a terrible struggle. I may add 
that the reason that the Spanish race has not 
done better in America is that they promptly 
interbred with the far inferior native races, 
and with the imported Africans; in other 
words, they lost all of their really best blood 
to America, where it became hopelessly di- 

60 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

luted with blood of a very inferior quality/* 
"These young men of the South after the war 
came West to enrich a vast area of country/' 
explains one. "Some regions, like Missouri, 
Minnesota, California, Oregon, and so on, 
appealed to these young men more than the 
regions that, like Kansas and Iowa, had 
fought in the Civil War. They went to 
regions of the West that welcomed Southern 
people, and gave a chance for success. Al- 
though they broke with all Southern tradi- 
tion as to business, these people were, so far 
as my personal knowledge goes, gentlemen 
always, born slaveholders, impoverished by 
war, with education varying according to the 
measure of mishaps.'' " Emigration has taken 
from the South a large number of its best 
men and women: those most positive and 
aggressive in character, most energetic and 
having most faith in their own ability/' "It 
is estimated that 235,000 natives of North 
Carolina now live in other States/' This 

61 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

emigration began in 1850, and was greatest 
from 1866 to 1870. 

24.. " The strong fell first in battle ^ hut the weak 
fell in camp; so that the balance remained 
about the same^^ 

This is generally approved. It is denied by 
seven, and questioned by six. One dismissed 
the proposition with the word " Sophistry.'^ 
"The term 'strong' needs defining. It would 
be better to say ' energetic/ though this does 
not quite convey a truthful meaning. The 
man who falls first in battle is the man of 
restless disposition andr often misdirected 
energy; he, in a typical manifestation, is re- 
presented by the so-called soldier of fortune. 
If he stays at home he is likely to become a 
destructive social element, a demagogue or 
similar type. This kind of man, in times of 
peace, is better as a dead hero than as a living 
member of society. The better-balanced men 

62 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

in the regiments, mentally and physically, 
were those that survived, so that the last part 
of the statement is correct. War is always 
useful in, to a large degree, eliminating the 
aggressive and destructive element in any 
community. I believe that without an occa- 
sional war the increase of this element (pro- 
vided, of course, that they did not emigrate) 
would quickly result in national decay, pre- 
ceded by violent local outbreaks. War has 
the great advantage of holding up before the 
people and glorifying a well-balanced human 
type, the soldier, to serve as a breeding 
model for the women, like china eggs in a 
henhouse. In times of peace the breeding 
model is the man attached to the largest bank 
account regardless of anything else, at least 
in the older communities.'' "No,'' says an- 
other, "one strong man was worth as a citi- 
zen a dozen weak ones." 



63 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

25. ^^Inestimable damage was done hy the war 
in the South by preventing men from secur^ 
ing a proper education^ 

This is denied by only four, and ques- 
tioned by four. The idea is advanced by sev- 
eral that the war ''educated men/' and that 
"the necessity for working out their own 
salvation was of more value than book- 
learning, and made them men/' "Unques- 
tionably this is true of the upper classes. 
Many boys and young men designed for 
college courses were never able to take 
them, being cut off by four years of war and 
poverty afterward/' 

26. " The war could have been avoided if pa- 
tience and good sense had been shown ^ 

The comments on this thesis are most in- 
teresting and varied. Those that agree are in 
the small majority. The correspondent that 
says, "No one can answer this intelligently" 

64 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

is perhaps nearest the truth ; or the one who 
says this is "A proposition of too many sides 
to be discussed here/' We are reminded that 
"Lincoln and Lee held practically the same 
view ; they were representative of a large and 
influential element in the United States/' 
The suggestion is made that there was needed 
in addition a " reasonable respect for consti- 
tutional rights/' Disregard of constitutional 
rights is a frequently recurring criticism in 
this group of comments. The idea is ex- 
pressed that "the seed was sown when the 
Federal Constitution was adopted. It had to 
come." One believes that "two Confederacies 
would have been better than war and subju- 
gation." The latter opinion is given weight 
by inclusion of the fact of the enormous waste 
of Southern manhood. "I do not agree with 
what is written under this number. The 
seeds of the Civil War were planted in the 
Constitution of our Government. If slavery 
had to be abolished, war was inevitable. This 

65 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

institution was recognized and protected in 
the organic law. The owners could not with 
patience submit to its abolition or destruc- 
tion, without remuneration, and remunera- 
tion would — could never have been made. 
It was not a question of patience, but of 
degradation and dishonor — to submit to 
taking this property without voluntary con- 
sent of the owner, and for a just pecuniary 
equivalent, was to become a nation of pol- 
troons. Even if the loss to the South in hu- 
man life, and in property, and the whole 
train of evil results of this unhappy conflict, 
could have been seen from the beginning, I 
do not think ^good sense' required or could 
justify tame submission to the unthinkable 
disgrace which was required. From the utili- 
tarian standpoint I understand it can be 
said it is no worse to submit to the inevitable 
before the catastrophe than after all this 
carnage and loss, and good sense would de- 
mand the former. Not so ! A man, or state, 

66 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

or section, or nation without the spirit and 
determination not to submit to injustice and 
spoliation tamely, is worth preserving. No 
single man or people is lowered in the estima- 
tion of himself, or the balance of mankind, 
for submission, no matter how hard the 
terms, to that which by imperiling his life 
and all that is near and dear to him, he could 
not avert. With this sort of sentiment, our 
exhausted — well-nigh ruined — condition, 
can in a sense be retrieved ; but with no such 
spirit, for that people there is no future 
but degradation and pusillanimity.'" "To 
this my answer would be 'yes! But it 
seemed to be in the Etemal Counsels that 
nothing but war would satisfy the nation, 
North and South. Henry Clay's proposed 
solution of the slavery question, about 1840, 
involved an expenditure of twenty-five mil- 
lions of dollars, spread over several decades 
of years ; and would have involved no breach 
of peace ; would have caused no ill-will be- 

67 



WAR^S AFTERMATH 

tween North and South; and would have 
left the whole situation better than it was at 
the close of the Civil War, or, indeed, than it 
is now. But North and South rejected the 
Clay proposal or suggestion, and slavery was 
abolished at the cost of at least five hundred 
thousand of the best lives the nation had to 
give, and the blotting-out of values North 
and South to the amount of over ten thou- 
sand millions of dollars/' "No power on 
earth could have stopped it. The conflict 
was inevitable.'' In her novel "Cease Firing," 
Miss Mary Johnston, through her character 
of Allan Gold, thus^sums up this matter. 
"What do I think.? I think that we were 
both right and both wrong, and that in the 
beginning each side might have been more 
patient and much wiser. Life and history, 
right and wrong, and the minds of men look 
out of more windows than we used to 
think." 



68 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

2y. '' The democratic equality of the high-born 
and low-born in the camp was good for 
both; the pampered sons were helped by the 
democratic severity of their worky the ignor-- 
ant by contact with good manners and cul- 
ture^^ 
This is very intelligently and warmly dis- 
puted by a number. The majority are in- 
clined to qualify. Such effect was probably 
very transitory. "No — there was no asso- 
ciation to bring about such a condition. 
Education and refinement will always hold 
high above ignorance and vulgarity. Mili- 
tary training and service bring out the best 
qualities and also develop the mean qualities 
of a man."' "Undoubtedly the war was a 
strong educational force for the non-slave- 
owning Southern soldier whose mental hori- 
zon had been bounded by his neighborhood 
of a radius not exceeding fifteen or twenty 
miles : he saw things that he had never read 
or dreamed of before. But it is doubtful if it 

69 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

had any corresponding educational value to 
the ruling class/^ 

28. " Social lines vanished during the war^ and 
have not reappeared^^ 

Only eight assent to this unreservedly. 
What "social lines'' existed, perhaps "never 
deeply marked at any time in Virginia/' 
were natural and could not so easily be 
obliterated. They appeared less sharp in 
camp, but their apparent disappearance was 
only very transient. 

29. " The war made m^n work^ and this alone 
has been a great blessing to the South^^ 

Here the intimation that Southern men 
did not work before the war is emphatically 
denied. Likewise the further deduction that 
the "end of life is work." Still, a bare ma- 
jority approve the statement, and the re- 
marks that "not only in the South have men 

70 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

needed incentives to work" may be said to 
approximate the consensus of opinion. 

JO. " The South is the better by far for the 
spread of education^ for the willingness to 
work^ for the loss of slavery^ for the main-- 
tenance of the Union, and for the develop- 
ment of business. But for the war, as 
war, there was no redeeming feature, no 
benefit to any one, not one word to be 
said'' 

Only one seriously dissents from the con- 
cluding sentence ; and four deny parts of the 
first sentence. The following comments may 
be noted: (i) "The loss in blood and energy, 
and the demoralization cannot be calculated. 
It emasculated manhood North and South 
and built up graft. Pensions only weaken 
men"; (2) "Reconstruction was worse than 
war"; (3) "Too strong, but the curse of the 
war was heavier than the blessing"; (4) 

71 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

"The South is poorer for her loss of hold 
on the ideals which actuated her struggle''; 
(5) '^The war was worth all it cost to the 
South''; (6) "The war was a blessing in 
many ways to the South. The South is one 
hundred years ahead of what it would have 
been without the war"; (7) "The disturbance 
of the social arrangements of the ante- 
bellum days among the aristocracy, 'poor 
whites/ etc., etc., was biologically a good 
thing, since these class distinctions had 
ceased to be based largely on excellence of 
strain"; (8) "It is not unimportant to feel 
that there is something worth fighting for, 
worth dying for. It would be hard to say 
what there is of such worth in our present 
commercial-industrial life"; (9) "More me- 
nacing than war is the infertility of the 
'best' of men, but more especially of 
women"; (10) "The world has become com- 
mercialized because the idealists have been 
killed off." 

72 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

The opinion of an eminent judge seems 
worth quoting: "There is a degeneration of 
stock all over the country, but this is due to 
our social environment. We accept the prin- 
ciple of contra-selection but I think it diffi- 
cult to prove. There are just as good men 
to-day as there were at the time of the Civil 
War, only the time does not give them the 
opportunity to show their ability. The de- 
serters and the conscripts were often men 
who had to look after large families. The 
average of Rockbridge County is up to its 
usual standard. Families which were en- 
tirely wiped out by the war are the exception. 
There was usually enough left to keep the 
stock up.'' 

A Confederate general expresses the opin- 
ion that "the thing which will finally stop 
war is a conviction of its uselessness rather 
than any of its biological consequences,'' and 
"that pensions have done more harm than 
good, especially in the North. One great 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

cause of the depression in the South is the 
drain of pensions. The South pays ^60,000,- 
000 in pensions per year. Of the pension 
budget total of ^4,500,000,000, ^1,000,000,- 
000 has been paid by the South. North 
CaroHna pays ^4,000,000 per year, receiving 
$770,000 in return (this, besides paying 
$400,000 in Southern pensions to Southern 
soldiers). Indiana pays a little more and re- 
ceives back $10,000,000 per year. The pen- 
sion list is full of fraud. One $6000 judge 

in M draws $72 per month for total 

disability. A late Commissioner of Pensions 
at $7200 draws a pension for total disability. 
The pension list is kept up and increased to 
make a high tariff seem necessary. To keep 
up the tariff, the gaps in the pension roll 
must be kept up. So with warship expenses. 
They raise the rate of pensions because they 
cannot extend their area.'' 

In a certain Southem State the reversed 
selection of the war is held responsible for the 

74 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

type of governor. "The aristocratic counties 
of my State are completely faded out by loss 
of their leaders in the war. The same is true 

of the principal city . The men left are 

weak, undersized, and the State has few men 
fit for leadership.'' 

In a more Western State the punishment 
of the war is said to have fallen on "the old, 
fine, proud, pompous, hospitable aristocracy. 
It wiped out a third of it and impoverished 
half the rest.'' 

"The spread of education among the 
masses I consider has been the greatest curse 
which has ever come upon the country, 
North or South, just as it has been the 
greatest evil the West Indies have ever had to 
contend with," says our radical eudemist. 
"Work here, of course, means manual labor; 
willingness to perform this kind of work 
: .eans inability to perform any other kind, 
either from lack of opportunity or from lack 
of personal incentive." On the contrary, it 

75 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

is urged that "education has been of great 
benefit. Employment for all an advantage. 
Loss of slavery makes life better for future 
generations. Business is more diversified and 
progress greater. The number of mulattoes 
has decreased since the war. Union with 
equal rights and consideration for all sections 
is far better with sectionalism obliterated. 
War is a curse to any nation or people.'' 

"The evil effect of prolonged war in de- 
stroying the most virile males is manifest not 
only in the Southern States of America after 
the Civil War, but also in the Northern 
States, especially the New England and 
Middle States. Ben Butler as Governor 
of Massachusetts, Tammany rule in New 
York City and State, Quay rule in Pennsyl- 
vania, etc., were made possible by the 
inferior citizenship that they represented. 
The Southern-Civil-War soldiers were so far 
superior to the post-bellum generation that 
they controlled and directed public affairs in 

76 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

the South (generally speaking) until about 
1900, when practically all of them were dead ; 
the same is true to a great extent of many 
Northern States; it is difficult to find for 
thirty years after the war a conspicuous 
Southern leader who has not been a soldier." 



CONCLUSION 

In conclusion, we are impressed that with 
respect to the eugenic aspect of the Civil War 
we are dealing with matters insusceptible of 
precise determination. Many factors united 
to work an apparently racial effect; these 
factors are so intricately and reciprocally 
interrelated as to preclude definite isolation 
and tracing of the complete effects of any one. 
The patent results are thus more or less 
matters of environment as well as of differ- 
ences in germ-plasm, of euthenics as well as 
of eugenics. We hesitate to attempt even a 
guarded definite conclusion. Perhaps it were 

77 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

better to leave it to interested readers to 
draw conclusions each one for himself. We 
have presented the matter largely in the 
words of those who have given us the best of 
their life experience. A just weighing of all 
this evidence, however, leaves a decided 
balance in favor of grave racial hurt in con- 
sequence of war, and this certainty is cumu- 
lative, becoming more definite with the con- 
sideration of each new area. Each of the 
other baneful racial influences associated 
with the problem, social, cultural, and eco- 
nomic devastation, emigration, pensions, 
etc., is nevertheless the direct consequence of 
war and should be debited to it. Moreover, 
even granting that the South and the coun- 
try as a whole are, relative to ante-bellum 
days, no poorer racially in consequence of 
the war, — an assumption no one can main- 
tain in the face of the enormous waste of one 
million splendid souls, — it is further certain 
that, could we have had the inspiring pre- 

78 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

sence and wise counsel of these martyrs and 
their potential offspring, the country would 
now be immeasurably better off in a yet 
higher average of physical, mental, and 
moral stamina. In brief, the theoretical argu- 
ment for reversed selection seems beyond 
question. The actual facts concerning our 
Civil War and the events which followed 
yield no direct countervailing evidence. We 
must, therefore, decide that the war has seri- 
ously impoverished this country of its best 
human values. No one who has the right to 
speak. North or South, ventures to regard 
this war as a source of vigor or virility to the 
nation. In spite of its thousands of examples 
of heroism and self-sacrifice, it was plainly 
a strife between brothers, and a strife in 
which no one gained through his brother's 
loss. 

Nor does any competent authority in 
America maintain the singular heresy of cer- 
tain public men in England, that the waste 

79 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

of virility due to war can be repaired by 
compulsory or voluntary military drill. If 
we assume that such drill gives increased 
physical and mental vigor, an assertion true 
only in a slight degree, the fact remains that 
such results would not be perpetuated in 
heredity. No training, mental or physical, 
can raise a man above his possibilities and it 
is the possibilities only that his children in- 
herit. The events in a man's life leave no 
trace in actual heredity and none in trans- 
mission, unless the events have consequences 
which impair the vigor of the germ cells. 
Those of us who believe in the value of 
sound physical training to the growing youth 
cannot admit that barrack life is in any 
worthy degree a substitute for it. 

Edward H. Clement, of Boston, referring 
to these investigations, has used these strik- 
ing words : " Ever since the last quarter of the 
last century the lamentation has been heard : 
Where are the poets of yesterday .? Where are 

80 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

the historians, the philosophers, the poHtical 
leaders, the moral reformers [of Boston], 
whom the whole country and the world 
gladly followed in the liberalizing of thought 
and of religion. In the light of the emphasis 
on the degeneration of nations through their 
glorious wars, answer might well be sought 
in the Roll of Honor ^ of Harvard Memorial 
Hall. The price was worth paying, no doubt* 
The ones who gave their lives in the Civil 
War most certainly thought so. But the 
price was exacted all the same. There stand 
the names of those who, but for this sacrifice, 
might have continued the glory of Boston in 
all the higher reaches of intellectual life, in 
national politics, and in social advance.'' 

The Civil War was followed by the extinc- 
tion of slavery, by the maintenance of the 
democracy, and by the spread of the free- 
school system of the Union throughout the 

* On this roll are the names of ninety-six men 
from Harvard University who fell in the Civil War. 

8l 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

rural districts of the South. That all these 
results were most desirable, even vital to the 
extension of civilization in the New World, 
no one may now deny. But we may hesitate 
to ascribe any of these results directly to the 
Civil War. Sooner or later they were inevit- 
able in the life of the people concerned. The 
exhaustion of the South opened the way, but 
their final establishment on a basis as per- 
manent as any human institution can be is 
due to their innate relation to wisdom and 
righteousness, and not to the results of any 
campaign. If these were wrong, they would 
not have endured. If the struggles of blood 
and starvation had left at the end a wrong 
decision, it must sooner or later have come 
up again for judgment. 

A splendid summary are the words of the 
Confederate officer who gave us our proposi- 
tion 30: "The South is the better by far for 
the spread of education, for its willingness to 
work, for the loss of slavery, for the mainte- 

82 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

nance of the Union, and for the development 
of business. But for the war, as war, there 
was no redeeming feature, no benefit to any 
one, not one word to be said/' 

We may finally close this discussion with 
the words of one of the most successful sol- 
diers of the nineteenth century, William T. 
Sherman. On May 21, 1865, he wrote to a 
friend, James L. Yeatman, " I confess with- 
out shame that I am tired and sick of war. 
Its glory is all moonshine. Even success, the 
most brilliant is over dead and mangled 
bodies, the anguish and lamentations of dis- 
tant families, appealing to me for missing 
sons, husbands, and fathers. It is only those 
who have not heard a shot, nor the shrieks 
and groans of the wounded, friend or foe, 
who cry aloud for more blood, more ven- 
geance, more desolation/' 



II 

WAR'S AFTERMATH IN MACEDONIA 
BY DAVID STARR JORDAN 

Some two years ago the Balkan States 
formed an alliance for the purpose of freeing 
their kindred people in Macedonia from the 
rule of the Turk. They chose for this pur- 
pose the most costly, wasteful, futile, and 
uncertain method possible: the method of 
war. It is clear that war was not the original 
purpose of the allies — at least not that of 
Bulgaria. Some sort of moral or political 
suasion was expected to follow from mobili- 
zation. But such possibility was dissipated 
when the King of Montenegro advanced on 
Scutari. 

The conditions in Macedonia seemed to 
justify any sort of interference. The rule of 
the Turk is always inefficient. The race, being 

84 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

primarily military, has always failed in civil 
administration. Long periods of careless 
tolerance have alternated with savage mas- 
sacre, the attempt to eradicate all those with 
a different religion or a different language. 
Moreover, Macedonia was beset by bands 
of outlaw patriots, "comitajis,'' working in 
rough fashion for the freedom of Macedonia, 
the one band for its independent autonomy, 
the other for its union with Bulgaria, the 
majority of the people of Macedonia being 
of Bulgarian origin. The changes in politics 
in Constantinople brought to the front the 
"Committee of Union and Progress,'' and 
to this committee "union'' means the con- 
version, banishment, or massacre of all ele- 
ments alien in religion or in speech. The 
same spirit of politico-linguistic intolerance 
pervades all the rest of Europe, extending in 
its degree to Schleswig, Trieste, and Alsace- 
Lorraine, as well as to Finland, Poland, and 
Macedonia. And in Macedonia it gave rise 

8s 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

to the proverb, ''Better an end with horror, 
than horror without end/' 

The Balkan War began in an honest spirit 
of ahruism. But as Vv^ar is hell, its atmos- 
phere is hate. Victory breeds ambition, and 
ambition in the use of force means moral 
perversion. The meddling of the Great 
Powers led to the dismemberment of Mace- 
donia, and that, under the inflamed condi- 
tions then existing, made the second war 
inevitable. Now Macedonia is a desert waste 
and the conditions in the Balkans are worse 
than ever before. But of this Europe ceased 
to take notice. It had deeds still more hid- 
eous in contemplation. It is a common ex- 
pression in Sofia, "Europe n'existe plus,'' 
("Europe no longer exists.") And that is 
true so far as concerned any help or guidance 
Europe might exert over these sorely tried 
young nations of wrangling shepherds, mad- 
dened by victory, defeat, injustice, and mur- 
der. 

86 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

A friend in Bulgaria writes (April, 1914): 
"There could be no better illustration in the 
world of your often repeated belief that 'war 
does not settle anything/ The Balkan pen- 
insula has always been a problem. To-day 
the problem is keener and more acute than 
ever before. It has come to be a terrible 
plague, an awful curse. Life here is wretched. 
Man is doomed. The fruits of these superb 
valleys are misery and agony. The only 
deeds upon which our magnificent moun- 
tains look down are murder, rapine, streams 
of blood, and fields of bones. And there is 
no way out. The very breezes breed hatred 
and our wild tempests shriek revenge. The 
birds sing to us of past injustice. The streams 
soothe our spirits with the intoxicating whis- 
per of future revenge. Our fathers taught us 
to remember the Bloody Turk. We teach 
our children to remember the treacherous 
Greek." 

The basis of these hatreds is not primarily 

87 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

war. Nor is it to any great extent the differ- 
ence in race. At the bottom it is reHgious 
intolerance. Difference in language is the 
most obvious sign of heresy in rehgion. 
Through this intolerance nearly a million 
people, almost half the people of Macedonia 
and Thrace, have lost their homes and sav- 
ings since the war, and are wandering as 
refugees among people of their race who give 
them scanty welcome. 

In October, 191 3, my Bulgarian corre- 
spondent wrote: ^'The lot of the refugees 
is wretched beyond description. Those in 
Samokov are dying /laily from cold and 
privation. They are without homes, prop- 
erty, schools, and everything else, including 
hope. Then added to this hopelessness is 
the fact that the Bulgarians do not like these 
refugees. They tell them: ^My brother is 
lying dead in Macedonia because of you, and 
now you come up here to live in my house, 
eat my bread, and take my job. Get out.^ 

88 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

"And the refugee answers: *Who told you to 
come down to Macedonia and trample down 
our vineyards, eat our flocks, and then run 
off and leave our village to be burned ? I 
don't care if your brother is dead in Mace- 
donia, My brother is dead, too/ The Bul- 
garian will survive all this because he is of 
such a nature that he cannot be entirely 
conquered, but the process of recovery will 
be terribly, terribly painful/' 

In May, 19 14, the writer, accompanied 
by his friends, Dr. John Mez, of Munich; 
R. H. Markham, principal of the American 
School at Samokov; and Emil F. HoUmann, 
of Oxford, crossed Bulgaria and Macedonia 
from the Danube to the .S^gean Sea. Among 
other things we saw the burned towns and 
the refugees. In western Bulgaria a single 
good highway leads from Sofia to Salonica. 
Down this highway the Turks fled in the 
first Balkan War, the Turkish population 
following them. Up this road the Bulgarian 

89 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

troops fled in the second Balkan War, fol- 
lowed by the Greeks. While the Rouman- 
ians were burning their homes, the Bulgarian 
farmers had no stomach for fighting Greeks. 
After the Treaty of Bucharest had divided 
Macedonia from east to west by an artificial 
line the Greek army retreated from Bulgarian 
territory, followed by most of the Greek 
population, burning towns and bridges as 
they went, as the Turks before them had 
done. 

All the way from Sofia to Petritsch, the 
border town, we saw the groups of refugees. 
From Simlivit, the jiorthernmost town of 
Bulgarian Macedonia, to Petritsch, every 
town — Dzumaia, Livonovo, Kula, and the 
rest — has been burned, wholly or in part, 
scarcely a house within reach of the moving 
armies being left with a roof over it. 

In Petritsch, hundreds of refugees from 
the Salonica district sit about on the rough 
stone sidewalks waiting — waiting for the 

90 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

revision of the Treaty of Bucharest. Some 
newspaper had said that the Powers would 
revise this shameful treaty so that these 
people could go back to their homes. But 
that revision^ will never come. "Europe 
no longer exists.'' 

One man in Petritsch, a citizen of West 
Virginia, had come to Macedonia to settle 
his father's estate, a good farm near Salonica. 
This he had lost; and as a refugee he was 
keeping a little food shop competing with 
many others for the trifling purchases of 

^ Again my friend writes: "It is impossible for us 
to stay in the frying-pan, but we don't know just 
what fire to jump into. A belief is inculcated and 
widely accepted that Roumania and Turkey are 
both going to return to Bulgaria the land they took 
from her. Our northeast boundary will be as of 
yore, our southeast boundary will be Enos Midia. 
England, I believe, is the godmother who will bring 
this about. When we are 'licking,' let the big bullies 
keep their hands off. When we are being whipped, 
we implore their help, curse them for their delay, 
and build spacious air-castles out of their unsub- 
stantial promises." 

91 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

half-starved people. ^'The cost of living has 
doubled ; the means of living are gone/' 

In Sinjelovo, a little Bulgarian town on the 
Greek side of the made-up boundary, the 
men had all been driven across the river into 
the Bulgarian holdings. The women re- 
mained and gathered the crops. In general, 
the women harvested all the Balkan crops 
in 191 3. Thanks to the help of rain and sun- 
shine, the harvests were most bountiful. 

The great highway crosses the border on a 
bridge over the little river Bistritza ("clear 
water''). Here we found encamped the 
growers of tobacco, "Turkish tobacco," from 
"a little Dead Sea of Commerce," the rich 
valley of Strumitza. The Bulgarian growers 
were not allowed to pass the border. The 
buyers came up from Salonica and the crop 
was transferred from the hundreds of bul- 
lock teams to a host of buffalo carts and a 
train of camels headed for Salonica. Inci- 
dentally the owners paid a duty of 33I per 

92 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

cent for the privilege of crossing Greek terri- 
tory. Incidentally, too, we may notice that 
the Treaty of Bucharest has cut off most of 
the hinterland from the seaports of Salonica, 
Cavalla, and Varna. The effect of this on 
Salonica has been most hurtful. The high 
tariffs and excessive taxes "'have made this 
the most critical period in the history of Sal- 
onica: the Government of Athens treats its 
new provinces as the goose with the golden 
egg.^' ^ ^'The cow that gives the milk for mili- 
tary aggrandizement at Athens is the New 
Greece.'' 

Crossing over into this new Greece, we 
were for two days in the camp ^'Christos 
aneste Hellas,'' the guests of a division of 
the Greek army, charming young men on the 
whole, many of them citizens of the United 
States. Some of these were possessed with 
the ^^On to Constantinople" idea, but one 
of them confided his belief that war brought 
^ Die Information^ April 22, I9I4, 
93 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

no good to Greece, nor could he see why 
Christians should want to kill each other. 

At Demir Hissar, where the highway 
crosses the railway which connects Adrian- 
ople with Salonica, we met the Greek refu- 
gees from Thrace. These were living in box 
cars at the stations, a dozen or two at this 
and each of the other stations on the road. 
At the larger towns, as Kilkis and Salonica, 
they were gathered in great tent cities, ten 
thousand or more in each place. All these 
towns on the road between Drama and 
Salonica, originally half Bulgarian, the rest 
Greek and Turkish, had been burned in whole 
or in part by one or all of the three armies 
which passed through them. For the history 
of these conflagrations I refer the reader to 
the report of the Carnegie Commission of 
Investigation. As to this monumental piece 
of work I may say that I believe it to be 
absolutely trustworthy, as just and as accu- 
rate as such a report could be made. It is 

94 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

not pleasant reading for the most part. It 
was not easy writing, but the cure for the 
evil conditions which have prevailed and 
still prevail in the Balkans rests on knowing 
the truth as to the disease. Publicity would 
cure most of the larger evils from which all 
Europe is suffering. "There never was a 
good war nor a bad peace.'' In this Benja- 
min Franklin was essentially right, but no 
bad war ever gave way to a good peace. War 
fills the ground with the seeds of other wars, 
and while these spring up, peace exists only 
in name. 

The refugees at Demir Hissar came from 
the region about Adrianople. These had 
been driven out of Thrace to make way for 
Albanian refugees from Servian rule in Novi- 
bazar. These Albanians gave the Greeks 
from two hours to four days to vacate their 
holdings. The Government refused pass- 
ports or protection. The farmers were not 
allowed to go to the towns to sell their prod- 

95 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

uce and they had no alternative but to go. 
With the Turk, as more or less with the 
other Balkan nations, "union'' means one 
flag, one religion, and one language, and 
aliens are given the choice of immediate con- 
version or banishment, or in extreme cases 
massacre. The whole situation was summed 
up by one Thracian farmer in the Italian 
word "duro" ("hard"). 

But these conditions were not so hard as 
those of the Bulgarian emigrants, for these 
fled in the autumn and winter. The Thra- 
cians set forth in the perfect weather of the 
Macedonian May. To the children this 
movement in crowds from place to place, 
cooking rice on fires of weeds, had all the 
charm of a picnic. 

It is estimated that there are about three 
hundred thousand of these Greek refugees 
in Macedonia. Little by little they are set- 
tled on farms and in villages abandoned by 
Bulgarians and Turks. It was said that fifty 

96 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

thousand of these had come from Asia Minor, 
driven out by boycott and ostracism before 
the disturbances in Smyrna and Mytilene. 
It is estimated that about forty-five thou- 
sand Bulgarian refugees from Turkish Thrace 
are at Burgas. In a recent Turkish journal 
is a plea for bringing these back to Thrace : 
"These Albanians are more expert with the 
mauser than with the plough. They show 
no skill in any trade save that of cattle- 
thieves, while the Bulgarians are thrifty and 
industrious, and they are now our friends.'* 

It is said that the towns about Varna are 
crowded likewise with Bulgarians driven 
by the Roumanians from the Dobruja dis- 
trict filched by them through the Treaty of 
Bucharest. 

Out of Greek Macedonia before the ist 
of June 212,000 Turks had left the port of 
Salonica. Most of these went as steerage 
passengers on the steamers for Constanti- 
nople, carrying with them their scanty be- 

97 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

longings. These have been placed in part 
in properties abandoned by Greeks in Thrace, 
and in part, it is said, on the property of 
inhabitants of Asia Minor. Many of these 
are Pomaks, Bulgarians converted to Is- 
lam. It is claimed by the Greeks that most 
of these have come from Servian and Bul- 
garian Macedonia. 

Some Turks are still left in the towns of 
Bulgarian Macedonia, to all appearance 
mostly idlers. In Greek Macedonia, there 
are still many Turks. The number is roughly 
estimated at sixty thousand, most of them 
being in the larger towns. Turkish teamsters 
and other laborers are numerous, while 
Turks of the wealthier classes are abun- 
dantly in evidence in the Salonica cafes. In 
Bulgarian Thrace, Greeks are unwelcome, 
but no attempt has been made to expel the 
Turks. About a dozen Turks have seats at 
Sofia, and these constitute the majority of 
the present ^' liberal '' ministry over the demo- 

98 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

cratic and anti-war elements, the combined 
radicals and socialists in that confused and 
incoherent body. The priests of the state 
church still call for war and urge their 
flocks "not to listen to the godless prattlers 
who talk of peace. What Bulgaria needs is 
war/' But more war would be suicide. The 
socialists print in black headlines, "Let us 
meet violence with violence.'^ Even from 
her own soldiers Bulgaria would seem to be 
in danger. Their experience with Roumania 
sickened their ardor. If they were gathered 
together again with guns in their hands and 
brought face to face with another awful 
summer, it is possible that they would make 
a violent and bloody protest. The Bulga- 
rian is the most long-suffering of men, but 
there is a limit beyond which he will 
not go. 

Chiefly it is those who do not do the fight- 
ing who want more war. The condition is 
different in Servia and in Greece, where vic- 

99 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

tory has brought its inevitable demoraliza- 
tion. The miHtarist is in the saddle, and the 
wise and conservative counsels of the min- 
isters, Paschich and Venezelos, count for 
little so far as the management of Macedonia 
is concerned. 

In Servia the Bulgarians are mostly not 
allowed to leave, but are forcibly converted 
into Servians. Their ^* religion'' and their 
names are changed together. Papoff be- 
comes Papovitch, Radosloff is Radoslavitch, 
and the young men are at once forced into 
military service. 

Race differences are not held of high im- 
portance. The visible essential is linguistic 
uniformity, with subordination to the Greek 
patriarch instead of to the schismatic exarch 
at Sofia. It is not strange that in the confu- 
sion many Bulgarians turn toward the more 
stable influences of the Roman Catholic 
Church. The belief, partly justified, that 
Russia has betrayed and abandoned Bul- 

100 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

garia helps to give force to the movement 
away from the reUgion of Russia. 

The final legacy of war is corruption and 
hate. The "heroic war/' to quote the head- 
lines of the London journals, becomes in- 
evitably the "squalid war/' the "mad war/' 
the "sad war." 

But in all this, the uninformed and selfish 
meddling of the Great Powers has a large 
responsibility. The Treaty of London, for 
well or ill, created the mythical kingdom of 
Albania. This was not for Albania's sake, 
but to quiet the jealousies of Austria and 
Italy. The treaty deprived Servia of Duraz- 
zo, Montenegro of Scutari, Greece of Epirus, 
thus overturning all agreements among the 
allies as to the adjustment of the liberated 
lands. The inevitable alternative was the 
dismemberment of Macedonia, and as no 
provision was made for enforcing tolerance 
of any kind in the heated combatants, no 
tolerance exists. Some sort of autonomy 

lOI 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

should have been given to Macedonia. Its 
lands should have been in some fashion held 
in trust for its people, and the rights of per- 
son and property of all the varied races in 
this long-suffering land should have been 
held in respect. Some provision for safe- 
guarding the rights of men is not too much 
to expect of a concert of Powers assuming to 
represent the most advanced phases of world 
civilization. If the Powers could not do this, 
— and it seems that they could not, — they 
should have kept hands off. 

With half the effort spent in wresting the 
village of Scutari from the hands of King 
Nicola, it would seem that the second Balkan 
War could have been forestalled and the un- 
fortunate adjustments at Bucharest would 
never have taken place. 

But all this is past history. The fact ac- 
complished cannot be changed, and the great 
migration, like that forty years ago from 
Alsace-Lorraine, cannot be turned back- 

102 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

ward to the abandoned homes. There is some 
degree of hope for the future, wretched as the 
present condition may be. The new popula- 
tions will take new roots in time, and in new 
interests men forget to hate. Where exhaus- 
tion makes war impossible, there is time for 
mediation and for conciliation. Bulgaria, 
most humiliated of all, offers, for that rea- 
son, if for no other, most hope for the future. 
The most powerful influence in all south- 
eastern Europe for good will and good order 
exists in Robert College at Constantinople. 
This is democratic, international, and Chris- 
tian. Its hold is stronger in Bulgaria than 
anywhere else. The intellectual leaders at 
Sofia are very largely its graduates. 

In any case, there can be little progress in 
the Balkans until settled quiet gives oppor- 
tunity for agricultural, industrial, and edu- 
cational advance. And settled quiet is still 
far away. It awaits the time when the civil 
authority shall everywhere dominate the 

103 



WAR'S AFTERMATH 

military, and where customs unions, cooper- 
ation in business, and cooperation in thought 
shall lead these people to recognize that one 
fate befalls them all and that the welfare of 
each Balkan nation is bound up in the wel- 
fare of its neighbors. 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



